PlayBox Technology Neo scores high in UK football

Two of Britain’s largest and most successful Premier League football clubs have upgraded their broadcast channel branding and playout systems to the latest-generation AirBox Neo series from PlayBox Technology.

“Based in the UK Midlands, the larger of the two clubs has long pioneered the use of television as a medium for reaching out to supporters throughout the UK and around the world,” says PlayBox Technology chief commercial officer Ben Gunkel. “AirBox has successfully powered its two programme channels since 2014, providing all the facilities required for channel branding, title graphics, subtitles and playout. Like the great majority of our customers, the club also appreciates the ability to update playlist schedules with near-live files or even live-to-camera presentations at very short notice.”

“The second club, located near the UK west coast, also sets an excellent example of the way in which sport-focused organisations and major venue owners can extend their viewership far beyond traditional regional or national boundaries,” adds PlayBox Technology president Don Ash. “Transmitted in both SD and HD via satellite as well as cable and streaming media, the club’s matches are now accessible to subscribers practically anywhere in the world. AirBox Neo is closely integrated with the club’s studio infrastructure and makes very creative use of TitleBox Neo both for channel branding and sports-related text overlays. Upgrading to Neo gives the channel managers at both grounds many new features including the ability to deploy UHD playout whenever they so choose.”

AirBox Neo adds UHD capabilities to the core PlayBox Technology content playout system which now supports UHD, HD and SD in single server. Recently added features include a streaming input supporting HTTP, HTTP Secure, UDP, RTMP, MMS, MMSH and YouTube.

TitleBox Neo provides a wide range of interactive on-air graphics and titling capabilities which can be manipulated live. It includes substantial improvements for dealing with UHD projects as well as supporting HD and SD operation.

SafeBox Neo replicates remote content to local playout server folders for safe transmission. It implements a new graphic interface plus new significantly faster processing for moving primary or copied content to the playout and central storage servers. In addition, a new workflow routine protects content being overwritten.