Case Studies

Ant and Dec's "Push the Button" Benefits from Matrox Convert DVI

Ants&Dec's PUSH the BUTTON
Matrox's multi-award-winning Convert DVI scan converter was chosen to assist in the live workflow on entertainment show "Ant and Dec's Push the Button" which recently returned to prime time ITV1 on Saturday evenings.
 
ITV is one of the four biggest broadcasters in the UK and is also the leading commercial channel. It produces hit TV shows such as "X Factor", "I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here", "Downton Abbey" and "Dancing on Ice".
Ant (Anthony McPartlin) and Dec (Declan Donnelly) are two of Britain's most successful television presenters. Having recently won the award for most popular entertainment presenters at the National Television Awards for the tenth year running, they have firmly established themselves as the undeniable champions of British Saturday night entertainment. It is Ant and Dec's own production company, Gallowgate, which produces "Push the Button".
 
The show sees two families going head-to-head in a battle to take home a huge cash prize. It has returned with all the best bits from the last series as well as a host of new games and surprises—and this time it is totally live.
 
Gallowgate's Line Producer Marcus McKinlay commented, "We are using Skype to webcast from the homes of four families to Fountain Studios in Wembley. Each Skype feed then uses a Matrox Convert DVI to provide live SDI video for transmission...The combination of Skype and Matrox technologies has dramatically reduced our production costs and in turn, enabled greater creative freedom."
 
Matrox Convert DVI scan converts from any DVI source to SD/HD-SDI with support for external bi-level or tri-level sync. It also allows users to output a region-of-interest and scale the source as well as operate in 'stand-alone' mode.
A PC laptop equipped with 16:9 webcams was placed in the homes of the contestants and using their broadband connection a Skype call was made to workstations based at Fountain Studios. Marcus went on to explain how Convert DVI met the technological needs of the show, "Matrox knows video well and Convert DVI simply does what it says, to broadcast standards. The units are robust and portable and can be pre-programmed as hot-swappable stand-alone devices. Customers know that scan conversion can be prohibitively expensive and impact the show content".
 
"Ant and Dec's Push the Button" demonstrates how a combination of freely available software and low-cost hardware can "push the boundaries".