Sending HD content from New York to Los Angeles (and vice versa) just got a bit easier – as easy as a push of a single button, in fact. Point.360, which owns 13 post houses throughout the U.S., has launched a new high-definition content-delivery service that helps producers send and receive uncompressed or lightly compressed material from Point.360's Highland, CA, facility to the all-digital, HD-capable Broadway Video in New York City. Point.360 doesn't own an HD facility in NYC, so the partnership made economical sense.
They're calling it the "first commercially available [and easy to use] transcontinental SDTI transmission service." Both Broadway Video and Point.360 offer clients on either coast the ability to playback, record, and feed 270 Mbps SDI and SDTI video. This all-digital transmission has the potential to let content owners distribute their feature films between West Coast labs and New York-based licensees such as pay TV services. Clients can schedule long-haul transmission circuits and any ancillary services such as additional dubbing and distribution, all with one phone call to either partner. The next phase, the company said, will be secure connections between the U.S. and Europe, Asia and Latin America using fiber lines and the carrier Smartjog.
That's the difference between this new service and others, like EdNet, that have come before it. Point.360 Chairman/CEO Haig Bagerdjian said no one has offered a service that includes an integrated system that procures a local public switch (for sending content from the facility to a regional distribution hub) and national bandwidth (to get across the country) using the same terminal for reservations. Heretofore, these two critical connections would have to be set up separately, via numerous phone calls, which adds time and extra expense to the process.
By integrating all of the logistical issues under the command of a single graphical user interface (developed by The Switch, a local transmission services company with locations in New Jersey and elsewhere) content delivery becomes easy and reliable. Long-haul carrier Broadwing handles the signal across the country while The Switch handles the local connection to Broadway Video. Extra fiber cabling was required to link Broadway Video and Point.360 to The Switch in both regions. The signal can include fully synced video, audio and closed captioning.
Broadwing offers customers network and quality-of-service monitoring and video signal monitoring in real time from its Columbia, MD, headquarters and the ability to schedule circuits on an occasional basis. Content delivery can be regularly scheduled on a weekly basis, or can be used for a single transmission.
The service becomes cheaper the more you use it. When volume goes up, it can be very cost-effective, since the bandwidth has already been allocated. Broadwing charges around $12/minute, on average. Through this partnership, Point 360, The Switch and Broadway Video can offer uncompressed tape or digital file clones in real time.
By leveraging the system-integration expertise of Video Products Group, Point.360 has addressed the technical hurdles involved in getting SDTI to run unobstructed through a myriad of fiber lines, switches, embedders and routers to link up Point.360 and Broadway Video with full uncompressed HD. The result is an exact clone, complete with four channels of audio – and Dolby E 5.1 audio, if required.
Bagerdjian said Point.360 is also negotiating with other carriers to develop similar service between New York and, say, Chicago (where Point.360 owns a post facility), or even across North America. For example, Point.360 has a deal with Globecast to deliver HD content (14 popular Buena Vista TV programs, such as Desperate Housewives) weekly for broadcast in Canada.