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Date Posted: 2/19/1999
Fox Sports Net's NAB '99 Shopping List
Mark Coleman, vice president of technical operations
With its 22 regional channels reaching 62 million homes, Fox Sports Net continues to expand. Already the sports cable network has outgrown its current Los Angeles and Houston facilities and is in the midst of a major overhaul of both of its operations centers to help support future growth. While Fox has already bought some major equipment for the facilities, Fox Sports Net's Vice President of Technical Operations, Mark Coleman, will have his hands full at this year's NAB.
The network is planning to move into a new Los Angeles master control center by September 1999 and will be expanding its Houston operation, which is expected to be up and running by December. Communications Engineering, Inc., a Newington, Va.-based systems integration firm, is building both facilities.
The two upgraded plants are 601 serial digital component and are based around Sony's Betacam SX format and Tektronix 256x256 routing. They will house all of the master control operations for Fox Sports Net and its regional cable channels, as well as for FX.
Fox Sports Net's new Los Angeles site is around the corner from TCI's National Digital Television Center (NDTC). Since it has a strategic partnership with TCI/Liberty, the sports network plans to move its transmission services from Globecast to NDTC.
Coleman says he hopes to create a seamless interface between the two locations and with its New York partner, Rainbow Media Holdings. Fox Liberty owns 50% of Rainbow Sports, which co-manages several of Fox Sports Net's regional networks.
"We would like to be able to have a virtual network where we could, through our Louth and our HP file servers, call up Los Angeles and Houston and have [the video file] appear at any location," says Coleman. "We're also looking to work with some of our providers like HP," he adds, "to see how far they have come in their development of WAN connections for our file server technology."
This year Fox Sports Net has been rolling out its NDS compression system for satellite delivery to cable headends. The headends are equipped with Wegener MPEG-2 based integrated receiver decoders (IRDs).
"Now that we are having all of our product in the digital domain, we would like to be able to look for efficient ways to transport our product across the country for backhaul, says Coleman. "We will also be looking at delivery systems, whether across land line or satellite, and [using the] efficiencies of the MPEG compression system."
Compression, he says, has helped the network spend "the right amount of money in the right place." Since it began using the NDS 8:1 compression system, Coleman says, Fox Sports Net has turned back seven transponders, and plans to turn back even more transponders this year. Fox Sports Net currently shares 20 transponders with FX and other Fox/Liberty ventures.
Coleman also says he will be looking for digital backhaul services and is interested in seeing what MCI and AT&T have to offer. The network currently uses Vyvx for analog backhaul for live events.
Fox Sports Net uses National Mobile Television's trucks for production. Coleman says he will be looking to see if the company has added anything new to its production units.
Fox Sports also wants to improve its on-air look by adding the latest in broadcast graphics software.
"We use a fair amount of Avid Technology [nonlinear editors], so we need to see how far along they are and to see if there are any new developments in that area," says Coleman. He will also be looking for software systems that can run regional sports information in the form of a ticker, "to give it that regional flavor."
High definition is not among Fox Sports Net's near-term goals. "As far as I can tell, it's not in our foreseeable future," Coleman says. "That's not to say that we won't pick the right time and place to dabble in it." The network will continue to "watch the HD phenomenon," he quickly adds, and upgrade its services whenever the opportunity arises.
"With each move that we make, whether it's new talent or adding new programming, it raises the bar," adds a Fox Sports representative familiar with the cable channel's agenda. We've got to have the technological capacity to meet and exceed what cable operators as well as our viewers are expecting."
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