Alston Elliot powers sports graphics broadcast ecosystem with Bluefish444 Epoch
UK-based Alston Elliot was founded in 1992, and has subsidiaries in South Africa, India and Australia. It has over 25 years of success as a provider of turnkey televised sports graphics and data solutions, often fulfilling the role of technology partner to broadcasters. Alston Elliot is the official graphics service provider to the forthcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 and Rugby World Cup 2019. Alston Elliot’s turnkey graphics services have been adopted by broadcasters of football including the English Premier League, FA Cup, Europa League, and WSL. Graphics services to broadcasters of other sports include snooker, golf, motorsports, darts, athletics, tennis, rugby league, hockey, fishing and kabaddi.
Since establishing an office in Australia in 2011, Alston Elliot have supplied some of the country’s leading broadcasters including Fox Sports, Network 10, Channel Nine, Channel 7, ABC and SBS. Audiences in Australia have watched Alston Elliot graphics during the KFC Big Bash cricket, ICC World Cup, A-League football, Australian Grand Prix and National Rugby League, the latter with a new broadcast graphics package for Augmented Reality on Spidercam.
At the heart of graphics creation by Alston Elliot in Australia are products from Bluefish444, Vizrt and ChyronHego. Viz Arena for virtual ads, analysis and image insertion, Viz Trio for character generation, ChyronHego Paint for telestration and analysis, and ChyronHego Virtual Placement for virtual graphics, are all used interoperably with Bluefish444 Epoch SDI video cards.
Alston Elliot uses high-quality, low latency, multi-channel fill and key Bluefish444 SDI I/O Epoch video cards within their in-truck and in-studio on-air facilities. Ed Lopes, Operations Manager at Alston Elliot Australia, said, “Bluefish444 video cards integrate perfectly with our on-site requirements, and have allowed us to reduce the size of our in-truck footprint.”
Alston Elliot has integrated numerous models of Bluefish444 SDI video cards into systems. Epoch | Neutron, Epoch | 4K Supernova and Epoch | 4K Supernova S+ are installed in mobile setups, and used during high-profile event coverage, such as the Rugby World Cup, Olympics, NRL, and Formula One. During such demanding telecasts, Bluefish444 were relied upon to deliver live television broadcast and up-to-date scoring, statistics and graphics.
“It’s important that the hardware we use provides a high level of reliability. We’ve found Bluefish444 Epoch video cards to be of the highest quality, and the support that we receive is sensational and extremely helpful in all respects,” said Lopes. “This has been a standout feature of investing in Bluefish444 products.”