In Broadcast - November 2013 - 28

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 25 - NOVEMBER 2013

N E W S

InFORM

Success For SIS LIVE Product Range
SIS LIVE discuss its current product range at the forefront of the market...

A

lthough best known for its
b roadc a s t a nd s ate llite
services, SIS LIVE has moved
successfully into product design
and manufacturing over the last
few years, partially due to crosspollination between the various
arms of its business. As well as
selling hardware and services to
external clients it also develops
products to suit its own needs,
giving it a good perspective on the
exact requirements of the market.
Led by David Meynell, Managing
Director, and supported by many
including Chris Wright, Head
of Engineering, the team has
been recently enhanced by the
appointment of Product Sales
Director, Martyn Hopkins. Martyn
has brought with him extensive
experience in all areas of broadcast,
satellite and defence media and
communications sectors.

when the company required a fully
automated, robust, lightweight
antenna. Searching the market
it discovered that there were no
products that quite ﬁtted the bill
and so decided to make its own
unit, calling it 'uPod.' uPod is the
only true 'ﬂy-drive' meaning it can
be mounted onto any vehicle's roof
bars or packed into hostess style
trolleys and used as a flyaway.
Since its inception uPod has
been further improved and has
spawned a range of compact VSAT
products aimed at ﬁrst response
satellite newsgathering and military
markets. SIS LIVE has now taken
this portable uplink technology
even further, extending the range
to include everything from the
12kg ManPak unit which can be
comfortably carried in a rucksack
over rough terrain, to the large
DriveForce vehicle mounted 1.8m
antenna unit. Both these units are
market-leading and have been used
in a range of scenarios.

ManPak

SIS LIVE has also invested
heavily in accurate tooling and high
quality, low tolerance manufacturing
processes, ensuring that the quality
and performance of its antennas is
optimal and ideally suited for high
bandwidth transmissions. This
signiﬁcant investment has enabled
the development of units which
feature high levels of integration and
are extremely lightweight due to the
extensive use of composite materials.
Its initial move into product
design and manufacture came

SIS LIVE's ManPak terminal is one
of the lightest and most powerful
on the market and the only one
which features no removable
parts, making it ideally suited for
the Defence market. It is already
being used by various armed
forces throughout the world to
provide mobile, easily portable
satellite communications as well
as unobtrusive, fixed location
visual monitoring.
ManPak can be used to maintain
verbal and visual communications
between soldiers in combat and
their bases, enabling commanders
to assess the situations in multiple
locations and make appropriate
strategic decisions. For signiﬁcant
and large-scale events this feed
can be simultaneously monitored
by senior commanders at HQ.
In addition to its value in strategic
situations, a number of armed forces
around the world are recognising the
value of having live, visual evidence
of the actions undertaken by their

The uPod series is an integrated,
yet compact, SNG uplink
system that works seamlessly
with any satellite capacity

Weighing just 12kgs, ManPak is
an integrated and compact VSAT
terminal that provides a high
bandwidth connection

28

SIS LIVE Managing Director
David Meynell

The DriveForce vehicle features a mounted 1.8m antenna unit

soldiers and/or law-enforcement
professionals. ManPak can also
be used to provide temporary and
instant CCTV wherever needed,
including covering incidents at
airports, ports, check points and
border controls.
These versatile units can be ﬁtted
to helicopters, drones, buildings,
waterborne vessels and any other
structure for surveillance. The units
can easily monitor from any location
in the world and can be redeployed
as and when needed.

Keith Lane, Head of Operations,
Sky, said: "DriveForce is a great
innovation and addition to their ﬂeet,
enhancing the services provided
to Sky Sports."
Since then these systems have
been involved in numerous high
profile transmissions including
the delivery of news coverage
from the birth of Prince George
and the technically challenging
BBC Airport Live broadcasts from
Heathrow Airport.

DriveForce
With increasing demand for high
bandwidth HD transmissions, many
existing vehicle mounted antenna
systems use mounts developed for
small aperture antennas bolstered
to take a larger reflector, thus
compromising the design.
With DriveForce, SIS LIVE
adopted a 'grass roots' approach,
ensuring that the mount is optimised
to carry the large 1.8m antenna and
capable of operating in wind speeds
of up to 60mph, almost double that
of competing products.
The ultra-high performance carbon
fibre system is fully automated,
capable of very high bandwidth
or dual path transmissions and
incorporates SIS LIVE's awardwinning differential antenna control
technology to ﬁnd and track any
satellite within seconds.
Having received tremendous
feedback from operators and
clients who had experienced its
existing DriveForce SNG truck,
SIS LIVE launched an additional six
DriveForce vehicles back in February
to support Sky Sports News and
other news and sport customers.

DriveForce is a fully-automated,
motorised, 1.8m vehicle-mounted
satellite uplink system designed for
rapid deployment

For Sky Sports DriveForce was
used to help realise their ambitious
mission to broadcast live from every
one of the 92 Premier and Football
league club grounds in the United
Kingdom in just 12 hours, making
broadcasting history in the process.
Sky and SIS LIVE also used
DriveForce as the system of choice
for their explorations into ultra HD
(4K) satellite transmission. In August
a series of tests was conducted
using the SIS 67 uplink vehicle, a
new fully redundant, dual path uplink
CONTINUED ON PAGE 29

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