Europe, Gearhouse Broadcast, Customer Driven, Technology Focused, Best of Breed
Event: ASPIRE Academy for Sports Excellence
Client: The Sports City Project, Doha
ASPIRE Academy for Sports Excellence was a huge scale project to install a broadcast system in the world's largest indoor sports venue. It was carried out under extremely tight timescales and completed in two months. The academy comprises a swimming pool, diving pool, football pitch, table tennis court, five a side pitch, judo/volleyball court, karate arena, gymnasium, a multi-purpose hall, fencing arena, athletics track and squash court. The Aspire venue has been built to host the 15th Asian Games Doha 2006.
In most sports arena cable is rigged at the time of the broadcast. This has a number of disadvantages in terms of the time it takes to rig/de-rig the cable; the cable install is temporary and not very robust technically. With a permanent installation these problems are removed and it allows the flexibility to provide television production coverage across each of the sports disciplines taking place. The installation was designed to provide a future proofed solution by installing both triax and fibre options at each wall box.
Crew
There were a number of freelancers employed to in the installation, 15 Specialist Riggers, 25 local labourers, 14 broadcast wiremen, 1 technician, 1 supervisory engineer, and 1 engineer.
The installation
The installation consisted of a complete broadcasting infrastructure within the arena including 140 Wall Boxes, 19 x 47 RU Racks of termination and equipment, 700 kilometres of cable (triax, fibre, SDI video, CAT-6 & audio multi) and over 7000 connectors.
There are two technical areas, one at ground level for the connection of OB trucks and one on the third floor. There are also twenty commentary boxes, two studios and a gallery on the third floor.
The infrastructure installed allows any Outside Broadcast company to arrive at the venue and by simply connecting into the OB room, they will be able to cover any multi camera production anywhere in the arena, or cover all events at the same time by using the installed wall boxes throughout the venue. They can also send or receive feeds to and from any of the commentary boxes and utilise the studios by use of the tie lines between the ground and third floor.
The application is completely future proof. In addition to the standard triax cables that have been installed, Gearhouse Broadcast installed SMPTE Hybrid Fibre Camera Cables to every wall box as well as installing fibres to each venue. There are a further 50 fibres and 30 SMPTE hybrid cables between the two technical areas.
The equipment
Sony Grade One Monitors, Tektronix Analogue and Digital Waveform Monitors, Leitch Video and Audio Distribution and Conversion Equipment, Bel Audio Monitoring Units, Belden Audio Multi, SDI Video, CAT-6 and TRIAX Cables, Draka SMPTE Camera Fibre, Fischer Camera Connectors and Custom Wall Box Plates, as designed by Gearhouse Broadcast Limited.
The contract totalled 12 million QR (Qatar Riyals) and demonstrates Gearhouse Broadcast's ability and skills to undertake a project of such enormity, positioning the company as a leader in the field of Systems Integration.
