The University of Arizona recently overhauled its live sports production capabilities to more closely align with the grandeur of its sports tradition, transitioning its aging analog control room to an all-digital, HD-capable environment. Two Tightrope Media Systems’ ZEPLAY slow-motion instant replay system were added to inject fresh excitement into home Wildcats games, including football, basketball, volleyball and gymnastics.
Each ZEPLAY system provides eight channels of live replay (four in, four out), a built-in multiviewer for studying angles, and extensive tagging options to assist with storage, recall and lightning-fast highlight package creation.
The university builds profiles for each sport, so operators can pull down the home team, type in the player number and use a hot button to tag a play, This is especially ideal in basketball, where fans are close to the action. Operators can assemble a quick player highlight package after a scoring spurt to keep the crowd juiced during breaks. It couldn’t be done without ZEPLAY’s tagging options.
Systems integration company AVR worked closely with the university on design initiatives for the control room and installed all systems, recognizing the clear benefits of including ZEPLAY in the overall solution.
AVR also added new routers, switching and audio equipment for the new control room among other systems, while running fiber connections to new digital scoreboards in the venues — the same scoreboards that now enliven the venue environments in cooperation with the ZEPLAY systems.
