Interview – San Antonio Express News – “NewTek Scores”

NewTek scores

Travis E. Poling EXPRESS-NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

Publication Date : January 1, 2008

About 70,000 National Hockey League fans have tickets to the first U.S. regular season outdoor NHL game today. But another revolutionary development is happening behind the scenes for a much larger audience.
Thanks to a 10-pound device called the TriCaster from San Antonio company NewTek Inc., the NHL is launching a live pre-game webcast detailing the faceoff between the Buffalo Sabres and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The TriCaster, at a cost of $5,000 to $10,000, allows one operator with less than an hour of training to switch between as many as six different cameras without a trailer full of equipment.

“The box is amazing in its function and will give the league the ability to broadcast wherever, whenever,” said Andre Mika, vice president of Broadband and New Media for the NHL. “The TriCaster is a game-changer in our effort to deliver timely content to the passionate fans of the NHL.”

Despite being fairly new to the market, the TriCaster has become ubiquitous in pro and amateur sports when it comes to an easy way to put live video content on the Internet.

The National Basketball Association will use it for live streaming of games for all 15 NBA Development League teams, including the Spurs-affiliated D-League Austin Toros. Live Web content from the BCS Championship game uses the TriCaster. And schools such as Penn State, the University of Southern California and Notre Dame use the technology for all manner of sporting events.

“TriCaster is just taking over sports,” said Philip Nelson, NewTek senior vice president of strategic development. “The Internet television revolution is here. What we’re empowering is the live revolution.”

Amateurs and professionals alike can use the equipment. It allows everything from a grade school play to a college volleyball game to be seen live on the Internet.

Nelson said he recently spent just 30 minutes teaching a handful of University of Texas at Austin public relations interns how to use the TriCaster to capture a Toros game.

“What I’d like to conquer is high school sports,” Nelson said. “What that would allow is for my mother to watch my son play a ballgame live.”

Already, high schools across the country are buying the technology to produce school newscast and to stream games over the Internet.

Churchill High School recently bought a TriCaster, and the Northside Independent School District has at least one. It recently was used to let all students in the district view an address by U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

tpoling@express-news.net

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