A sporting chance

Dubai Sports chose LPD screens for its studio over LCD and plasma alternatives.

Dubai Sports viewers may have noticed an impressive new display screen for post-match commentary and interaction taking pride of place in the studio since the end of September. We get the full action replay.

When Dubai TV was looking to complete its recent sports studio upgrade with a giant screen for replays, presenter interaction, and all-round aesthetic benefit, it turned to Prysm Inc, for whom the Dubai installation represented its first foray into a TV studio in the region.

Steve Scorse, Prysm’s vice president for EMEA, is convinced it will be the first of many: “This was our first broadcast installation in the Middle East, although outside the region we’d already done CNBC’s Mad Money studios in the US which have been on air for four or five months now.

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We’ve had plenty of other business in this region, but it’s mostly been museums, corporate installations and that kind of thing. Broadcast is somewhere we’re just starting to tap now.”

Part of the reason for the inroads the company is making with regional broadcasters is, claims Scorse, the opening of its Dubai office in September: “We’ve had an unofficial regional office for about a year and a half, but it was basically a sales guy working as a consultant from a temporary office,” he explains.

“In September we opened our registered office in the Duty Free Zone after spending about three months finding it and fitting it out.

“I think you definitely have to have a presence in the Gulf if you’re going to work successfully here. We did have that before thanks to our Bangalore office – we’d take people from the Bangalore office and send them to Dubai for a few weeks.

Now we have the new office, though, we can actually sponsor full time staff with visas and have a dedicated sales and support team here, and I think that makes a massive difference.”

Perhaps so, but it presumably took more than a shiny new office in Dubai to convince the powers that be at Dubai TV that Prysm was the right choice for the Dubai Sports upgrade?

Rashed Amiri, Head of Dubai Sports Channel said of the decision: “We met with four other manufacturers of different videowall platforms before deciding that Prysm was the right solution for the studio.

The qualities and features of Laser Phosphor Display technology within the broadcast environment are in line with what we want to bring to the sports channel in the future.”

Scorse expands: “A big concern for Dubai Sports was what the end product would look like. They wanted to create a seamless backdrop, so they weren’t keen on using traditional LCD or plasma wall displays. There’s always the problems of non-uniformity of the surface, as well as viewing angle problems with traditional LCD or plasma wall displays.

“Basically, the traditional options are all designed for straight-on viewing, so when there are camera angles all over the studio, as in this case, questions of angle become more important.