When STV (part of the SMG plc) decided to vacate its cramped city centre location in Cowcaddens in favour of the new Pacific Quay development overlooking the River Clyde, great care had to be given to the design and ergonomics of the new facility.

The task facing the station as it relocated to the new ‘Media City’ (on the site previously used for the Glasgow Garden Festival), would be replacing 120,000 sq ft with just 65,000 sq ft of real estate, into which they would force an expanded infrastructure.

Fortunately design, technology and the laws of efficiency have moved on during the four decades STV spent in Cowcaddens, and working with the architects, STV were able to purpose design four floors of open-plan space around an atrium.

Project director, Tom Gallagher and head of broadcast technology, Gary Welsh, weighed up their options — knowing that in applying advanced connectivity via a Cat6 copper fibre cabling infrastructure they had the opportunity to futureproof the facility at the dawn of the new era of high-definition.

The plan for Pacific Quay was to allow offices and newsrooms to intermix with post-production, dubbing/editing suites and rest areas, while included in the ground floor layout adjacent technical and transmission studios would be divided by a glass partition.

For these critical regional transmission control rooms the station had to decide whether to opt for a traditional control bridge, a rear projection solution or individual LCD monitors as they had at Cowcaddens. The monitor wall had to provide an easy reference for the programme schedulers but the main proviso was that the new hardware needed to handshake with the station’s existing Evertz MVP™ multi-image processors and be able to operate a 24/7 duty cycle 365 days of the year.

Both technicians had been exposed to Christie’s CSP70 rearpro display with 70in blackbead screens at last year’s the IBC Show. Since this system is server-agnostic, it would allow the station’s existing processors to drive either analogue or DVI signals directly to the cube.
 
Thus Christie were invited to STV for a demonstration. “We didn’t need a complete control room solution and we liked the fact that Evertz processors and Christie cubes both spoke to each other,” said Tom Gallagher. “One of the underlying concepts is that we knew we would be putting nothing on the system that was unproven.”

As a result STV wasted little time in placing the order for four CSP70’s. The 70-inch cubes are driven by Christie’s RPMSP-D100U projectors, fitted with dual 100W UHP lamps (run at 80% brightness) and 0.7:1 lens. The cubes were delivered in their own purpose-built chassis, mounted on dollies so they can slide forward for ease of service and lamp replacement. “The main reason for adopting this solution was the complete flexibility it offered us — and the reduced installation costs,” Gary Welsh reveals. “This was installed by us in a day,”

The tiled walls with 1mm edge butt provide an elegant and cable-free solution with just a single fibre carrying the SDI-embedded signal. The cubes display SXGA+ and STV run this in 1400 x 1050  native resolution. With two Evertz frames in the back office the system has built-in redundancy.

“This room is the last port of call for all our commercial and programme content, announcements and network feeds prior to transmission,” notes Welsh. “And it’s all operated from just one handheld Christie remote.”

Back in Cowcaddens each of the individual CRTmonitors had needed to be individually driven and cabled. “With this solution,” says Tom Gallagher, “the Evertz drives the entire system, producing graphics and time codes, and the CSP70’s take their feed direct from the rack via a DVI converter. This enables us to to monitor Vision, Sound, Timings and Alarms from a common platform that can be easily reconfigured to suit changing requirements.”

Best known south of the border for producing programmes such as Taggart and Rebus, STV outputs signals to its four regional areas in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen using Omnibus transmission software.

“We have four feeds leaving the building and all four show different scenes,” says Gary Welsh, adding that STV has the capability of supplying three different platforms — Analogue Terrestrial, Digital Terrestrial and Digital Satellite.

The architecture of STV itself includes two television studios fed from Grass Valley cameras and vision mixers and distributed by a Concerto multi format router. There are ten edit suites (including three tape suites) and seven Avid suites (incorporating Avid DS Nitris and Adrenaline editing). There are also five sound dubbing suites, with Digidesign industry-standard Pro Tools HD as well as Avid Newscutters and Crystal Vision synchronisers and distribution — and a Foley room.

The versatility of Christie’s broad, purpose-designed product range is also in evidence up on the building’s penthouse floor, where the main boardroom/conference suite offers stunning views from its terrace over the Clyde to the SECC and ‘Armadillo’ concert venue.

Clearly needing a compact projector that was HD ready in this partitionable room, they tasked Wave Integrated Systems of East Kilbride with devising a rearpro solution in an AMX-controlled environment. Wave’s Ewen Grimes opted for a twin mirror rig solution, using a Christie DW30 firing onto a 120in dnp New Wide Angle display, with a focal length of 3200 (cut down to 2472mm x 1405mm).

“It was always going to be a rear pro solution upstairs because we wanted a big screen and also hi-def capabilities,” Tom Gallagher explains. “We needed to create a flexible, working space.”

And as the television company’s showcase presentation suite, the fidelity of visual reinforcement needed to match its Dolby 5.1 aural capability.

 The DW30 is a wide-screen format projector using native 720-pixel resolution for high definition and next-generation single-chip DLP™ technology to deliver 3000 ANSI lumen images with superior colour accuracy — attributes of which Ewen Grimes was well aware. The ultra-compact DW30 also includes picture-in-picture, seamless switching, 10-bit processing, edge-blending and optional image warping.

“By the time Ewen made his recommendation we had already taken the decision to use Christie, since we were happy with the quality of their media wall downstairs,” confirms Tom Gallagher.

The conference room can receive Sky HD off air, studio SDI and VTR feeds as well as PC/laptop presentations delivered to the 120in display and two NEC 50in satellite plasma screens — all driven by Evertz 3000 MVP multi image processors. There is also production output for Freeview Off Air, Hi-Def DVD — and VHS if necessary. 

Tom Gallagher and Gary Welsh can now reflect on a successful transition from their former HQ which was carefully planned over a three week period, reporting that the big switch-on at Pacific Quay had been seamless.

It is estimated that the total spend on equipping this post modern facility with its technology infrastructure will have been in the region of £10 million.