Marlow, UK, November 13, 2017 - Leading broadcast equipment manufacturer TSL Products, today announced the Lutheran Church of Hope, a megachurch in Des Moines, Iowa, has purchased a TallyMan broadcast control system as part of an overhaul of its AV operations. 

The Lutheran Church of Hope caters to the spiritual needs of a large and diverse congregation, which includes 20,000 members across six campuses. The Church's message is delivered through a variety of 21st century means: traditional services with liturgy and hymns, streamed sermons, online webcasts, contemporary services supported by a 10-piece rock band, YouTube videos and an extensive list of programs and services.

Chief Systems Engineer Jim Sheppard challenges his team to keep up with the demands required to support these productions. They are in the process of revamping much of the Church's AV infrastructure to accommodate a transition from SD to HD, as well as the requirements of on-demand content infrastructure and streaming. 

"We were looking to put in place a system that would allow us to stream to our multiple locations at the push of a button, while keeping the process simple and manageable for all our volunteers who are not necessarily AV experts," says Sheppard. "In particular, we were looking for a control system that would help us coordinate all our critical components to ensure that our volunteer operators are aware of and can easily instruct all the relevant systems at pertinent times throughout the production." 

Every week, multiple sermons are streamed directly to all the satellite campuses from the technical core of the church's infrastructure, which is located at the West Des Moines broadcast campus. To help with this endeavour, Shepherd chose a TallyMan broadcast control system from TSL products. The new system can interface with a wide range of equipment from different manufacturers that include routers and switchers, as well as multiple audio and video monitors and multiviewers.  

Sheppard is creating an essential and customizable user interface for each position. The engineering team can automate and simplify complex multi-step operations into simple push button control for their teams of volunteer (non-engineer) operators. This frees up Jim's professional team to focus on technical triage and the task at hand, without worrying about the underpinning systems. Thanks to TallyMan's cross-platform capability it will be able to integrate with the different types of routers that the Church has in the different campuses. 

"From the operator's perspective, it's the same interface," adds Sheppard. "It makes it look the same even if the back end is different. That's why we didn't want to use a proprietary tally system." 

The fact that the TSL control system is designed to be configured and commissioned by the end user engineer (with a minimal amount of training) creates a great deal of expansion and multi-use potential for systems like this around the globe in the future. 

With more than 1000 systems in use worldwide, TallyMan is recognised as the most reliable solution to real-time, user-oriented control and dynamic data display, providing best-fit control for best-of-breed systems. The core software continues to evolve, incorporating the advanced access capabilities and automated workflow functionality that its users demand. A key part of the TallyMan functionality is the ability to design virtual control panels, usually implemented on touchscreen PCs. The latest release of tools allows operators to create multi-take buttons, which achieve multi-device, precisely time-aligned salvos of commands. The design platform now includes a new range of sliders, rotary encoders and X-Y control, which can be applied to anything from positioning robotic cameras to adjusting audio levels to colour correction as well as FlashBoard, a new screen-based information distribution and display system that recognizes the increasing need for critical workflow. Integrating seamlessly with TallyMan, third party control systems are capable of independent operation. 

TSL Products designs, manufactures and markets a range of hardware and software solutions that serve to simplify operations within the television broadcast, cable, satellite, IPTV and IT industries. Specializing in audio monitoring, broadcast control systems and power management tools, TSL Products' solutions satisfy and exceed the commercial, technical and operational requirements that exist in IT-based and traditional workflows, helping its customers to lower costs, generate revenue and streamline operations.

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