TVNZ USES CRYSTAL VISION EMBEDDERS FOR OLYMPIC BROADCASTS TO 104 COUNTRIES
New Zealand broadcaster TVNZ used 16 of Crystal Vision’s TANDEM HD-21 High Definition audio embedders/de-embedders to add commentary to more than 800 hours of coverage from the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, with the broadcasts distributed to 104 countries around the world and watched by more New Zealanders than any other television event.
The Olympics host broadcaster supplied all 40 incoming feeds to TVNZ with eight embedded audio channels. TVNZ needed to replace the Low-Frequency Effects channel with mono commentary on all of its coverage, and selected the TANDEM HD-21 for this purpose because it could overwrite a single audio channel and also had the benefit of being a space-saving single module. Adding commentary at the start of the production chain ensured the pictures and international sound always had the right commentary, whether it was being taken live to air in the production suite or recorded on a server for later replay. All the events requiring commentary were routed through the TANDEM HD-21s, with TVNZ using 16 boards because they needed to handle a maximum of 16 events a day. more
