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Azcar has outstanding, experienced professionals, the right industry experience, and the highest levels of enthusiasm and ability to meet your needs. From the start AZCAR focuses on understanding your long-term needs and providing a comprehensive quality service offering. Following are examples of AZCAR’s previous projects. These projects represent a broad range of solutions to illustrate the depth of expertise within AZCAR.
Education
UNLV


AZCAR Keeps Media Educators on Technology’s Leading Edge

As rapidly as the technology surrounding traditional and new media operations is changing, educational institutions specializing in broadcast journalism and media studies need to be on top of new innovations so that their students have a relevant experience as it relates to today’s job market. 

So when the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) was seeking to build a 29,000 square foot media facility on the first floor of Greenspun Hall to house the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies, it turned to AZCAR.  

“Azcar worked very hard to keep key members of the Journalism School informed and involved through every phase of the project, from conceptualization to completion,” says Laurel Fruth, assistant director of the School of Journalism and Media Studies and General Manager of UNLV-TV. “They helped us stay within budget, worked on our behalf with outside vendors and responded quickly and efficiently to problems.”

With 350 students, 15 full-time faculty and 10 staff, the facility boasts UNLV TV, a self supporting unit and KUNV Radio, the university’s FM radio station, both housed within the School of Journalism and Media Studies.  The media facility includes two television studios, a radio performance studio, on-air radio studio, a radio newsroom, a television newsroom with eight editing stations, two television post-production suites, two radio post-production suites, an ingest station, a teaching laboratory, a technical operations room and 18 editing stations. The television facility uses Avid Media Composers for editing, a 32-terabyte ISIS Interplay for storage and content management and Avid Air Speed for delivery. 

“We were seeking to create a technologically sophisticated learning environment for journalism and media studies students that closely resembles what they will encounter when they begin their professional lives,” says Fruth. “The new facility enabled us to transition from analog to high-definition television, freed us from tape-based delivery and streamlined our workflow.”

The new facility also enabled UNLV to move its radio station from an off-campus location back to the heart of campus and create new student laboratories and workspaces to allow faculty to study innovative and emerging technology. In addition, the new facility would not have been possible without significant contributions on the part of Avid and Sony.

“The crew was unfailingly courteous and professional, lead project engineer Hakim Kharbut was in constant contact with our engineering staff throughout the construction, and project manager Bruce Long made sure that we had the people and resources needed to complete the facility before the start of our Spring semester,” says Fruth. “The Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies clearly made the right decision by retaining Azcar as the broadcast system integrator for our media facility in Greenspun Hall.”

Fruth says that there has been an increase in productivity both in the classroom and the radio and television professional units.

“We attribute this increase in productivity to a number of factors,” she says, “including:  the shared storage editing environment that allows students to collaborate on projects; the increase in editing stations for both radio and TV; integrated workflow with i-News and Interplay; and the simple fact that we finally have enough cameras for students to use in the field.”

The Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies is one of the six departments of the University.

“Because of the new facility, we are now able to produce a daily television newscast and the purchase of a Hybrid Digital transmitter enabled the radio station to develop a radio news program for our students,” says Fruth.  “Most importantly, we have seen a significant increase in the number of students inquiring about our program.”

http://journalism.unlv.edu/
http://kunv.unlv.edu/

 


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Sports and Entertainment
Oklahoma Thunder - Ford Sports Arena

AZCAR Hits a Game Winner at the Home of the Thunder

When Oklahoma City officials began a major renovation of the Ford Center, home of the NBA Oklahoma City Thunder, AZCAR was called on to deliver a new HD Video Replay Control Room.

AZCAR worked closely with the City, the Thunder franchise and the Icon Venue Group in the design and build of the facility’s new HD Video Replay Control Room under a tight timeline and budget.

Rob Hedrick, Digital Media Production Manager for the Oklahoma Thunder, "The AZCAR team was very professional and a pleasure to work with,” he said. “AZCAR kept the project on time under arduous time constraints and provided valuable experience and met every need while remaining budget conscious. Our new production control facility meets every expectation."

“The AZCAR design team overcame space limitations necessitated by the unique arena design delivering a highly functional control room”, said Doug Houston, AZCAR’s Regional Business Development Manager.

AZCAR is an independent broadcast and multimedia professional services organization offering a wide range of innovative digital media solutions to broadcast, and media companies, as well as non-profit organizations, government, and multi-purpose sports and entertainment venues. AZCAR’s service offerings include technology solutions consulting, systems design and integration, digital media content production systems, program distribution systems, and audio visual professional systems. AZCAR serves clients from offices in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.




Broadcasters, Media & Entertainment (Network origination, Multiple station owners, Production facilities, Transmission/Distribution)
NFL Network
NFL Network’s expanded schedule and migration from SD to HD required additional multi-format production facilities at its Culver City, CA studios. Two additional audio and video production control rooms utilized Sony MVS switchers and Wheatstone audio systems. In addition, Sony HD studio cameras, editing and graphics systems were designed and built by AZCAR.

The central core facilities included large N-Vision wideband audio and video routers. NFL Network challenged AZCAR’s team to quickly design and build these additional facilities in time for live coverage of the NFL regular season games that began on Thanksgiving, 2006. NFL Network is home to live regular season games and NFL game re-airs, with exclusive NFL Films footage of the top games from the week.


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Public Broadcasting
Penn State Public Broadcasting
Penn State Public Broadcasting (PSPB) selected AZCAR to help them design and move its PBS television and NPR radio facilities, WPSX and WPSU, from the Wagner Annex on Penn State University’s Main Campus to the brand new Outreach Innovation Building several miles away.

During the move, PSPB also wanted to upgrade its core infrastructure from analog to digital to be ready for a future move to a full high definition broadcast facility. The new PSPB facility includes new digital video and audio routing switchers, digital SD and HD multi-stream master control with multiimage monitor wall, new digital terminal gear, digital intercom and a range of conversion equipment for maintaining the use of critical analog legacy hardware.

Additionally, the move required the relocation of STL/TSL microwave systems serving two transmitter sites, several satellite antennas including the station’s primary 6.1m PBS dish, the installation of 3 new steerable 4.8m antennas along with a new digital production switcher and character generator for the PSPB production suite.


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University of North Carolina (UNC-TV)
AZCAR was awarded a major contract to design and integrate all-new digital HDTV production control rooms, transmission and studio facilities by the University of North Carolina Center for Public Television (UNC-TV). The facility includes a total of two 256 x 256 wideband digital routers, four 256 x 256 AES routers, two HD video production control rooms with accompanying multi-channel audio production control rooms, HD studio camera systems, HD format converters, HD tape area, HD graphics and a RTS ADAM intercom.

This large Network Operations Center (NOC) project represents a continuation of our many successes in Public Broadcasting. Projects such as AETN in Arkansas, PPTN in Pennsylvania, WQPT in Illinois, and WPSX in Pennsylvania are just a few. AZCAR has demonstrated our expertise in High Definition TV production and transmission facilities at commercial and public broadcast facilities for over 6 years. UNC-TV is North Carolina's statewide digital public television network, made possible by a unique partnership of public investment and private support.



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Broadband & Network Operators (Cable/Telco/Satellite DTH)
Turner Entertainment Network
Azcar was please to be commissioned by Turner Entertainment Network to assist with the conceptual detailed system design & installation of their HDTV Network MC Facility.
This 193,000-square- foot facility handles 19 cable network channels for US domestic, Latin and SA markets, as well as an additional infrastructure capacity for well over 60 more future channels. The project required a sophisticated and ultra reliable dual path router with redundant control infrastructure,



News Gathering and Transmitting Vehicles and Mobile Production Facilities
Arab Radio and Television Corporation
Megahertz Broadcast Systems Ltd., a subsidiary of AZCAR Technologies Incorporated, was chosen by the Arab Radio and Television Corporation (ART) for a project that involved coach-building two Satellite News Gathering (SNG) vehicles. The new long wheel-base vehicles are equipped with Advent NewsSwift 150cm satellite dishes and feature two Xicom XTRD-400k HPA, Tandberg encoders/receivers and fiber links to and from external sources. The SNG vehicles are based in Saudi Arabia and are used on a roving basis to cover live sports events throughout the Middle East.

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Emerging Technologies Telecommunications/Cable/Mobile
Modeo
Mobile TV — television, radio, and podcast services delivering compelling content to mobile devices — is the latest market phenomenon to hit the iPod generation. MobileTV technology is here today and AZCAR is at the forefront. We were delighted to work with Modeo, a subsidiary of Crown Castle International, to develop a state-of-the-art DVB-H based broadcast center that meets the challenge of delivering high quality content to mobile devices. Modeo’s goal was to deploy a national mobile TV broadcast network based on the DVB-H international standards. AZCAR provided systems design and technology integration services for the Modeo Mobile Media Broadcast Center, as well as the demonstration system. AZCAR was appointed as the independent systems integrator, to bring together a “best in class” DVB-H facility. Suppliers include Microsoft, Thales/Thomson, Evertz, Motorola, Omneon, Scientific Atlanta, Hewlett-Packard, Harmonic, Newtec, Patriot and ATCI.

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Performance Venues and Production Facilities
Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church
AZCAR was chosen to help define, engineer and deploy the technologies necessary to support a new 94,000- foot performance venue and production facility for Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church. The scope of the project included video and sound systems for the 5,300-seat performance auditorium, 1,500-seat general activities auditorium and instructional technology enabled classrooms and media outreach center. From a technology standpoint, the production values in the performance venue and production facility are equally important to both the live event and the program broadcast stream. The media staff is small and mostly volunteer. AZCAR’s challenge was to develop audio, video and graphics systems that are capable of elegant production values even when operated by a small number of non-professionals. The solution employed by AZCAR, executed within a tight project budget, is ideally suited to the challenges posed by a project of this size and complexity solution.

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LDS - New Assembly Building
AZCAR completed systems integration of a two-year project for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. AZCAR designed, built, and commissioned the broadcast facilities in the Church’s New Assembly Building, a magnificent and modern 22,000-seat theater fully supported with both SDTV and HDTV televisions capability and separate sound reinforcement and program audio systems. These broadcast facilities include two video and audio production control rooms along with editing, videotape and master control facilities. Unique to this project were the two SDI and HDSDI output streams that broadcast events with simultaneous presentation, initially in over 60 languages and in up to 100 languages today. This four-phase project included consulting and engineering phases for implementation of the projects.

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Education
Drexel University
Paul Peck Alumni Center Main Boardroom
Originally designed for alumni conferences, the administration approached AZCAR to develop a comprehensive study and needs analysis to add state-of-the-art presentation capabilities to the Paul Peck Alumni Center Main Boardroom while maintaining the integrity of this historically certified structure. The features include a 100” diagonal 3500 ANSI lumen rear screen projection system concealed behind finished millwork. The sound system includes wireless microphone systems with DSP filtering system. Presentation tools include a document camera, VHS and DVD players. Control is provided via a color wireless touch panel, operable from anywhere within the Boardroom.

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Sports and Entertainment
Turner Field, Atlanta Braves
Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves, contracted AZCAR to assist in the design and system integration of their state-of-the art facility. At all times, fans are entertained and informed of Turner Field activities through superior sound systems, the BravesVision video board in center field, the PlazaVision board in the Fan Plaza and over 500 television monitors situated throughout Turner Field. The BravesVision video board is 29 feet by 38 feet. The PlazaVision board is 17 feet by 22 feet. These two huge boards make Turner Field unique among all sports facilities as two completely different shows can be produced - one for the seating bowl and one for the Plaza.

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Technical Training
Nextel Corporation
AZCAR is pleased to provide Sprint Nextel with specialized training services related to the 2GHz TV BAS relocation project to more than 900 U.S. TV stations throughout 2007 and 2008. The FCC has charged Sprint Nextel and incumbent licensees in the 1.9GHz-2.1GHz range with transitioning that spectrum to new uses under a new band plan. Based in Pittsburgh, AZCAR will help broadcasters navigate the complexities of the spectrum relocation and to understand the new equipment that is currently being installed around the country.




 

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