ENGLISH FOOTBALL CLUBS CHOOSE CRYSTAL VISION FOR ASPECT RATIO CONVERSION (December 2007)

Crystal Vision seems to have become the choice of Premier League English football clubs in search of an aspect ratio converter, following orders from Liverpool and Chelsea.

Liverpool Football Club purchased the ARC-10MC aspect ratio converter in September for its newly-launched television station, LFC TV, which broadcasts in 16:9 and is available on Sky, Virgin Media Cable and the club's official website.

With some of the football games presented to them in 4:3, LFC TV is using ARC-10MC's 4:3 to 14:9 Pillarbox preset to convert the pictures for live broadcast.

After considering other suppliers, Steve Smith, Station Engineer at LFC TV, explained that he chose the ARC-10MC due to its competitive price as well the ability to integrate other interface modules in the same frame, and added "Crystal Vision were able to supply this item quickly and on approval to meet our urgent requirements. Ray Davis has been very helpful in dealing with our enquiries and I have no doubt we will be dealing with them again soon."

Chelsea Football Club has selected the ShARC102-XP aspect ratio converter to help it enhance the experience of its 42,500 spectators by producing coverage for the big screens at its Stamford Bridge ground in London.

Chelsea is taking the live widescreen feed from the Outside Broadcast park and using the horizontal-only ShARC-XP to perform a centre cut - taking the middle 75% of the 16:9 picture width and stretching it to full screen so it fits on the 4:3 stadium screens. An ENC116 encoder is also being used to convert the SDI to composite for the mixer.

The availability of the products won Crystal Vision the order, with Chelsea TV's Technical Director, Simon Forsyth, commenting "Communication and delivery were excellent".