Quantel wins QVC Japan contract

Tokyo, Japan – QVC, the largest home shopping network in the world—with 110 million viewers in the U.S., Mexico, Germany, and the U.K.—is building a state of the art facility outside Tokyo in preparation for the April 2001 launch of QVC Japan. QVC Japan is a joint venture between QVC, Inc., based in Philadelphia, PA with annual sales of $3 billion (reported in 1999), and Mitsui Co. Ltd., a Japanese holding company with $140 billion in sales (reported in 1999).

QVC is returning to Japan after a disappointing presence in the 90's, which resulted in the company shutting down its Mall of TV Shopping network in 1998. The service will be broadcast over SkyPerfect satellite broadcasts as well as major cable networks in Japan.

Quantel awarded $4M contract
Of the $100 million investment to launch QVC Japan—including facilities, product inventory, and personnel– QVC put up 60-percent and Mitsui 40-percent. Of that $100 million, $45 million is being focused on the TV and Internet broadcasting facility. And, $4 million of it has been awarded to Quantel which will provide a powerful, streamlined post production solution—integrating a 14 port Clipbox server, four Editbox nonlinear editing systems, one Paintbox, and several Cachebox storage systems—critical to operational efficiency.

Each day's 15-hour live broadcast will be recorded into the Clipbox, along with raw footage from up to eight cameras. And, Editbox operators will be able to begin editing the day's segments and product demonstrations into a nine-hour condensed version for broadcast during the night. While QVC in the U.S. is a 24/7 live operation 365 days a year, QVC Japan will only be live 15 hours per day, with the remainder filled by a timely tape-delayed broadcast.

"During one hour of live broadcast, we may show 12 different products, and two or three of them may sell out right away. So rather than waste airtime at night showing products that already sold out, our objective is to boil the 15 hours of live programming down to nine hours which concentrate on those products that are still available," says David J. Frey, Vice Chairman and Representative Board Director for Tokyo-based QVC Japan.

Quantel fit the bill
After considering broadcast solutions from all the top vendors, Frey indicated that "only Quantel could deliver all the components necessary to make our broadcast model work." Specifically, Frey said Quantel won the contract because its systems proved reliable; it offered DVCPRO-50 video quality; handled 3D fonts in the Kanji and Katakana Japanese languages in real-time; and offered instant access to fault-tolerant centralized storage.

"We are installing a fully integrated, automated solution customized to meet QVC Japan's unique requirements," says Ken Ellis, CEO of Quantel, Inc., in Darien, CT. "QVC Japan did not want to incur any delays from the transfer of video between distributed servers, a problem common to most LAN server configurations. But with the multi-channel Clipbox, there is no such transfer delay because the video is instantly available for editing and playout to air, even while it's still being recorded into that Clipbox."

Meeting the Japanese Market
Ellis added that centralized storage also means that there will not be a need to duplicate the same clip on several servers, saving time and money. QVC Japan also expects to have a digital archive capable of storing up to 8,500 hours of DVCPRO-50 quality video.

"While our TV studio in America is one of the largest in the world, here in Japan, space is at a premium. So, our two studios at QVC Japan are relatively small, with 4,500 and 3,000 square feet respectively," says Frey. "We plan to use a virtual set by vi[z]rt, (formerly known as RT-SET) in Israel, which will display live video or 3D animated synthetic backgrounds." The facility also houses four edit suites, one Paintbox suite, a 3D-animation suite (with Alias Maya software), a suite for CG (character generator) design; and two live studio control rooms.

"In the proposal stage, we invited A.F. Associates of Northvale, NJ—a company that has provided systems integration services in the past for QVC in PA—to travel with us to David Frey's Florida offices to deliver a ‘joint presentation,'" says Ellis. "And, shortly thereafter, A.F. Associates won the multi-million dollar contract to provide the systems integration and engineering services for the entire QVC Japan broadcast installation."

Claudia Kienzle has been writing for the broadcast industry for over a decade. She can be reached at ckienzle@optonline.net.