BBC USES NEW SHARC-XP FOR EURO 2004 ASPECT RATIO CONVERSION (June 2004)

Ten of Crystal Vision’s newest addition to the ARC family were used to transmit one of the summer’s most important sporting events – the EURO 2004 football tournament. ShARC204-XP is a dual channel 10 bit digital horizontal ARC, which offers two outputs of each channel.

The BBC, one of Crystal Vision’s best customers, used the boards from a large outside broadcast van in Portugal. ShARC-XP’s high packing density is a huge benefit in confined spaces, allowing 24 channels in 2U.

The Portuguese national broadcaster RTP owned the rights to film the matches and provided the pictures to the BBC in 4:3 format. The BBC also had its own cameras in Portugal, which filmed in 16:9 ratio. ShARC-XP was used to match the Portuguese and BBC formats. The 4:3 Pillarbox function converted the aspect ratio of the Portuguese footage by compressing the image and adding black bands to the sides to make it suitable for viewing in 16:9.

The signal was then sent back to the UK where it was sent directly out to digital viewers in 16:9 format and underwent further conversion for analogue television viewers.