La Voz de Maria Relies on Broadcast Pix Slate™ 1000 Integrated Production System for Religious Programming in Dominican Republic

Billerica, Massachusetts (June 16, 2009) Broadcast Pix™ Inc. today announced that La Voz de Maria, a new cable channel that launched late last year on La Vega State Television in the Dominican Republic (DR), has chosen the Broadcast Pix Slate™ 1000 live production system to produce religious talk shows, public affairs programs, and church services of interest to its Latino Catholic audience.

Located in La Vega, La Voz de Maria chose the Broadcast Pix Slate 1000 because of its integrated video switcher, multiviewer, CG, and clip store that can be run by a single operator. Live and recorded programs are produced in the channel’s studio and a nearby chapel that has a direct fiber cable link to the control room. The studio is equipped with three Panasonic AG-HVX200 P2 cameras, with a fourth dedicated to remote field production. 

Channel officials especially like that the Broadcast Pix system is HD-ready, and can be easily upgraded by swapping out a single card, which maximizes the organization’s investment. Currently, the channel’s 12-hour broadcast schedule is seen only in the DR, though the plan is to deliver La Voz de Maria to Mexico and Hispanic markets across the United States via satellite within a year. La Voz de Maria is produced by Fundacion Padre Fantino. 

“This customer was motivated to choose the Slate 1000 because it’s a complete equipment package,” said Valentin Colon, president of AVL Tech, which offers sales, rentals, service, and AV integration throughout the DR and Caribbean. “When they compared the Slate’s price against the cost of buying comparable individual components or a much bigger production switcher, they realized that Broadcast Pix offered exceptional savings and price performance. This budget-friendly package has proven to be very advantageous to the launch and growth of this new cable channel.” 

Since the Latin American professional video and broadcast markets are of great importance to Broadcast Pix, the company has energized its marketing efforts to promote the Slate system throughout this region with the help of its Latin American channel partners. “Broadcast Pix is working to strengthen its relationships with our Latin American channel partners by providing them with the support and training they need to build profitable businesses for themselves and their customers,” said Arco Groenenberg, Director of Sales for the Americas, based in San Francisco, CA. 

“We are pleased to be making major inroads with the Slate system in the Latin America market,” said Groenenberg. “The Slate is a perfect product for many of our Latin American clients – adding value, with such features as our 2-M/E control panel – and securing cost effective upgrades in the future, such as our planned 3G/1080P HD version.” 

About Broadcast Pix Broadcast Pix is the leader in integrated live video production systems. Its Slate systems create compelling live video far more cost effectively than conventional control rooms. Every Slate includes a switcher, multi-view, CG, clip and graphic stores, and aspect and format conversion. Slate streamlines production workflow because it’s so well integrated together, and with systems that create clips and graphics. Slate saves 70% of the cost of buying a conventional control room, and then saves more on staffing, as even solo operators can create compelling video. Then Slate saves again when upgrading to 3G 1080p - the future HD standard. Broadcast Pix is based in Massachusetts, with offices throughout North America and in Europe. Customers include more than 1,000 leading broadcast, webcast, podcast, cable, entertainment, mobile, corporate, education, religious, and government studios in 70 countries. For more information, go to www.broadcastpix.com. Broadcast Pix and Slate are trademarks of Broadcast Pix, Inc. Patented. Made in USA.