audio commentary
Kevin Hilton looks at advances being made in
commentary systems, being driven by the
expanding live sports market.
Commentary - coming
in out of the cold?
T
he explosion in sports Song Contest, in this year's case codec was used for 12 commentary
broadcasting during the 1990s Channel 1 Russia, has to accommodate positions at the Junior Eurovision in
reinforced not just the place of large numbers of commentators for the Limassol, Cyprus during November
the commentator in television radio and TV coverage by broadcasters 2008. Most broadcasters stuck with
but also that of the of competing nations. Commentary G.722 over ISDN for the carrier but
pundit/expert summariser
Growth in
equipment for this year's event was some wanted higher quality
alongside - and the equipment
commentary
hired from UK manufacturer Glensound connections: Belgian broadcaster VRT
allowing them to make their technologies Electronics and comprised 80-channels went for MPEG-1 Layer II, RTS (Serbia)
pronouncements. Len Davis, a key
has been
of the company's ISDN codec systems used MPEG-1 Layer III and AVRO
figure in the development of
largely
and 25 positions using its GSOC34 (Netherlands) opted for MPEG-4 AAC.
commentary systems, observes that it commentators' box, linked over a Mayah spokesman Daniel Adasinskiy
is an expanding market. This growth
driven along
coaxial connection to the GSOC33 says the company sees "a lot of
has been largely driven along by sport
by sport but
control unit. potential in our codecs" for
but many other events call for some many other The cohabitation between combined commentary at events like Eurovision
kind of running explanation: the state
events call
codec/commentary units and more because of the capability to work with
opening of parliament, military displays
for some
conventional forms of equipment is different networks. So far this year RTL
and, increasingly, entertainment.
kind of
becoming more common as ISDN, IP TV has used Mayah codecs for
The king of this last category is the and other telecom/new media commentary from the Beijing and
Eurovision Song Contest, which most
running
technologies are used for voice links. Bahrain Grand Prix, while 15 MERK II
viewers watch not for the songs or the
explanation
Commentary equipment for the units featured at the Ice Hockey
voting but the asides of the previous three Song Contests, and the Championships in Switzerland.
commentators, many of whom now corresponding Junior versions, was Commentary equipment roughly
send up this increasingly absurd event. provided by Mayah Communications. divides into three categories: codecs,
The host broadcaster of the Eurovision The company's new Sporty reporter stand-alone and two-section systems
for big events. Codecs were first used
for smaller scale broadcasts,
predominantly radio commentary, but
are now moving into TV. Aside from
Mayah the main manufacturers in this
category are Comrex, Prodys,
Glensound, AEQ, You/Com and Tieline,
with a typical codec combining a mixer
with two balanced microphone/line
inputs, one unbalanced auxiliary
input/output and two balanced outputs .
with coding for wireless 3G, GSM,
satellite and wired IP, POTS, ISDN and
X.21.
Part of the appeal is that ISDN is now
available at most venues so all a
commentator has to do is turn up, plug
the codec into the line connection and
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10 l ibe l may/june 2009 l www.ibeweb.com
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