Newbury Business Today

A NEWBURY-based company is to help a German broadcaster produce major sports programming in High Definition (HD).

From Saturday, German broadcaster WDR in Cologne will begin broadcasting major sports programming in HDTV, spearheaded by the flagship ‘Sportsschau Bundesliga’ coverage of the German premier league.

The whole production process will be handled in HD using Enterprise sQ server-based production technology, developed by Quantel, whose headquarters are in Turnpike Road, Newbury.

WDR has produced ‘Sportsschau Bundesliga’ in Standard Definition using Quantel Enterprise sQ technology since 2003, and the success of the system led WDR to look to Quantel to drive its new HDTV service.

Quantel's director of sales in Central Europe and Middle East, Thomas Birner, said: “Enterprise sQ provides an ideal platform to take WDR and everyone else into HD production.

“It is well proven in terms of its ability to grow and adapt to future requirements - as the WDR installation shows - and its ability to serve all formats gives broadcasters complete flexibility in their operations.”