Televisions and production companies trust in Sony's tapeless XDCAM

TVE, Telecinco, Antena 3, Plural Entertainment or Videoreport Canarias are some of the Spanish networks and production companies that rely on Sony's XDCAM technology for their programs, consolidating the format not only for production but also for storage and exchange.

More and more television stations and production companies in our country are betting on Sony's XDCAM technology for the production of their programs, due to the combination of image quality, flexibility, efficiency and the advantages of the disk as a storage and exchange medium.

Sony's XDCAM range provides a reliable end-to-end solution for acquisition, production and distribution using a tapeless workflow based on MXF files. With this equipment, production companies and television stations significantly increase their efficiency, reducing production times as well as maintenance and operating costs, since discs are up to 30% more affordable than tapes and can be reused more than 1,000 times without errors.

TVE

This is the case of TVE, which has recently acquired various XDCAM HD422 systems in response to its needs in telecine theaters, HD mobile units as well as for the Institute's facilities, in which, among other activities, its training offer to professionals in the sector stands out. Some of the XDCAM family equipment incorporated into the public broadcaster's equipment are the PDW-700 camcorders, PDW-F1600, PDW-HD1500 decks and PDW-U1 recording units.

Telecinco

Telecinco also reached an agreement with Sony in 2008 for the acquisition of XDCAM equipment with which to replace its Betacam SP production equipment for news and programs. In total, more than 150 units of XDCAM equipment were acquired with which the chain has been progressively migrating towards tapeless solutions.

Antenna 3

Antena 3, for its part, also renewed part of its Betacam SX park in 2008 to switch to Sony's XDCAM. To do this, Sony equipped its facilities with more than 80

Plural Entertaiment

For their part, production companies also rely on Sony's XDCAM equipment for their productions. Recently Plural Entertainment, a producer of the Prisa group and one of the most relevant in Spanish-speaking markets, has chosen Sony's As Is from Antena 3 and the contest My family against all of Telecinco. Plural Entertainment values ​​the XDCAM system as being easy for editors to view and select clips, the speed of information ingestion, which saves many hours of digitization compared to tape media, and the great cost reduction that this entails.

This is also the case of Videoreport Canarias, which chose Sony's XDCAM technology as the ENG format to serve the regional public channel TV Canaria with more than 45 XDCAM equipment.

And all over the world...

The television production company Dorna Sports, exclusive owner of the commercial and audiovisual rights to the Motorcycle World Championship, has opted this year for high definition, using Sony's XDCAM HD422 technology. Its quality, versatility and robustness, together with the efficiency of working with files, allows them to cover television networks around the world faster than ever, in multiple formats and with maximum HD recording quality.

To do this, they had twenty Sony HDC-1500 cameras covering the track, four wireless cameras in the pit lane at the entrance to the pits, a camera in a helicopter that flew over the track, about eighty on-board microcameras mounted on the motorcycles and the new PDW-700 camcorders from XDCAM HD422, which are complemented by PDW-U1 portable recorders and PDW-HD1500 decks that provide all the connectivity that Dorna and the televisions those it serves need.

In this way, Dorna joins the growing list of European television and production companies that rely on Sony's tapeless XDCAM family in its HD422 version for the production of their programs. This is the case of the Italian public television RAI, which has reached an agreement with Sony to migrate its systems to a tapeless HD infrastructure over the next three years, in which it will invest six million euros. For this RAI has acquired 180 PDW-700 camcorders and 180 PDW-HD1500 decks from Sony, which it will use for its productions from news programs to series and documentaries.

Turkish national broadcaster TRT (Türkiye Radyo ve Televizyon kurumu) has also recently chosen this Sony technology for its migration to a tapeless HD system. Following the agreement reached, the company will provide TRT with thirty PDW-700 camcorders, twelve PDW-HD1500 recorders and eight PDW-U1 portable recorders, which will be used for its own production on the network's seven channels. Likewise, the Polish state channel TVP has recently selected this Sony format to migrate its news channel to HD, acquiring 29 PDW-700 camcorders and 14 PDW-HD1500 decks.

In the section of high-level television production, Sony's innovative PDW-F800 camcorder offers maximum features (CineAlta compatibility, fast/slow motion recording, Hypergamma, among others) as well as a guaranteed solution for HD production. With this, Sony offers a path towards high-level tapeless production with equipment identical in operation to HDCAM camcorders but with the efficiency of a file-based workflow and the advantages of professional optical disc, which for less than one euro per GB of capacity allows materials to be stored in a robust, reliable and long-lasting way.