[SatNews] SES (NYSE Euronext Paris and Luxembourg Stock Exchange: SESG) has announced that Eurovision – the European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) distributor of premium sports and news events – is broadcasting the 2014 FIFA World Cup to audiences throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia in Ultra HD and HD via SES satellites.
Artistic rendition of the NSS-806 satellite.
Eurovision is distributing matches live in Ultra HD to their global network using the NSS-806 satellite and SES’s teleport in Manassas. SES’s NSS-7 and SES-6 spacecraft are being used to enable Eurovision to deliver matches from the 12 World Cup venues throughout Brazil to the International Broadcast Center in Rio de Janeiro.
“Eurovision and the EBU are gearing up for one of the largest broadcast operations requirements in the history of the World Cup, now including Ultra HD content. The live coverage of some matches in Ultra HD will allow consumers to catch a glimpse of the future of TV,” said Paolo Pusterla, Eurovision’s Head of Procurement.
“Consumers today expect higher and better image quality when watching TV. We are proud to be able to continue working with Eurovision to fulfill the ever-changing demands of broadcasters with confidence, by providing hybrid solutions to deliver coverage of this spectacular sporting event to over 3 billion people around the world,” said Samantha McCloskey, Vice President of Global Occasional Use Services at SES.
More on the SES 2014 FIFA World Cup coverage and SES Occasional Use Services may be found by visiting this infopage.
SES is participating at CommunicAsia2014 (hall C, level 1) and also the CommunicAsia2014 Summit at Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Singapore, from June 17-20, 2014. For more information on the SES presence, please visit http://www.ses.com/18836830/CommunicAsia2014.
Additionally, SES also announced that the company has increased its reach in Asia-Pacific (APAC) to more than 41 million in 2013 from 36 million a year before, resulting in strong, relative growth of 15 percent.
SES maintained its position as the region’s leading satellite operator, carrying the highest number of DTH channels in APAC and reaching the largest number of DTH subscribers. To date, SES transmits more than 1,000 DTH channels, with over 90 of them in HD.
Deepak Mathur, Senior Vice President, Commercial, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East at SES, said, “We fully expect Asia-Pacific to continue its impressive growth in the DTH space both in number of platforms as well as subscriber growth, and to be the most dynamic market globally in the coming years. We have invested significantly in the Asia-Pacific region in the past three years to keep pace with the growing demand; not only increasing satellite capacity but also ensuring that we have the best talent in our regional headquarters in Singapore. SES-9, which we will launch in 2015, will be our largest satellite serving Asia and is testament to our belief in the region’s growth potential.”
The SES infosite is located at http://www.ses.com/