Southeastern University Boosts Fan Experience with ZEPLAY
By: Ian F. Fritzsche for TV Technology 2016 User Report
Director of Media Services
Southeastern University
LAKELAND, Florida - Southeastern University (SEU)-a Christ-centered institution of higher learning in Lakeland-has implemented several dramatic infrastructure improvements over the last two years. Upon adding football to our athletic program, we built a new stadium and transitioned the TV studio and control room that serve our Communication department to an end-to-end HD production workflow.
ZEPLAY is the most significant component to our sports production workflow.
As part of this upgrade, we swapped out our SD cameras for new HD fiber-backed cameras and ran fiber cabling from our studio to the new stadium a half-mile away. We now produce our SEU Fire football games in house in full HD, which stream live at http://fire.seu.edu.
The ZEPLAY slo-mo instant replay server from Tightrope Media Systems was among the finishing touches, and perhaps the most significant component to our sports production workflow. The ZEPLAY is purpose-built to generate instant replays and highlights of game action. We purchased ZEPLAY specifically for football, but well likely use it for basketball, wrestling and other sports as well in the future.
ZEPLAY brings value to any facility, spacious or space-challenged. Since our new control room was built with spare capacity, we input a different HD camera signal into all four input channels of the ZEPLAY and then feed the four output channels directly into the production chain individually. Our broadcast replays are also shown on the stadiums large LED video display during games, which has been a great enhancement to the fan experience at the stadium.
In tight spaces, ZEPLAYs value is amplified through a built-in switcher and multiviewer for use as a stand-alone system. The built-in multiviewer, which allows the replay operator to closely monitor eight camera angles (four in, four out) for selection helps us maximize our space and eliminates the need to use a separate multiviewer for replays, while the built-in switcher frees up switcher resources when needed.
We discovered ZEPLAY at NAB, comparing it to other instant replay systems including EVS. ZEPLAY was half the price, with twice the functionality, a quicker learning curve and better ease of use. While I had watched demos of several leading replay systems at NAB, ZEPLAY had the simplest, most intuitive operation. Twenty minutes into the demo, I felt confident I could run it in a live production situation.
User-friendly operation and a minimal learning curve were especially important, as broadcast students run the system during live events. Running in demo mode, our professors can teach students everything they need to know about ZEPLAY in less than a day, and students can continue to practice using the system on their own until they are comfortable with it before going live on gameday.
Once live on the systems, our students can quickly learn advanced features, including the production of highlight packages at halftime and following the game. We are just starting to tap into all of the features that ZEPLAY offers, such as tagging, but our operators can cleanly tag content based on players, teams and other criteria, so that in the future we can search our archives for specific clips to incorporate into highlight packages. Producing great-looking, entertaining sportscasts is a priority for us, but giving our broadcasting students practical, hands-on experience is equally important. We also wanted a replay system that our students would be likely to encounter as they look for jobs in the industry upon graduation from SEU. Since ZEPLAY is widely installed, it fit the bill.
It is clear that for our specific criteria, ZEPLAY was the best fit for affordability, performance, reliability, quick setup and ongoing ease of use. All of the capital improvements weve made, and especially ZEPLAY, have enhanced the fan experience on gameday. I cant imagine using any other system.
Ian Fritzsche can be reached at iffritzsche@seu.edu. For more information, please contact Tightrope Media Systems at 866-866-4118 or visit the companys website at www.trms.com
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Southeastern University Boosts Fan Experience with ZEPLAY 
