Europe, Gearhouse Broadcast, Customer Driven, Technology Focused, Best of Breed
Project: Euro 2004™
Client: Euro Broadcast Services 2004
Gearhouse Broadcast were contracted to supply the host broadcaster EBS 2004 with 10 Technical Operation Centres, respective technical staffing and cabling, for all of the Portuguese stadia where UEFA Euro 2004 ™ matches will be taking place.
Overview
A complex project, coverage spanned 10 stadiums split across 8 towns, over 22 days. Using both existing inventory and making substantial investments in additional broadcast equipment Gearhouse Broadcast provided the facilities used to distribute the international signal to all rights holders at every venue.
Over 70 crew members were recruited for the installation and rigging phases, and were rotated between venues depending on the complexity and size of the installation.
Equipment
Gearhouse Broadcast supplied the TOC's which act as the main hub between the multi-lateral OB vans, the IBC, the onsite Broadcasters and Portuguese Telecomm. The typical set up and provision of equipment at the 10 Operation Centres consisted of 64x 64 video and audio routing matrixes for main signal switching with large amounts of video and audio distribution amplifiers
provided by Leitch and DTL. There will be four video and audio monitoring positions at each venue which consisted of SDI waveform vectorscopes, audio test and measurement equipment and Sony BVM 14 inch grade "A" monitors. A variety of glue products will be supplied incorporating, Framestore synchronizers, A-D converters and D-A converters, audio embedders and deembedders and AES embedders and de-embedders. Gearhouse Broadcast will also be providing a communications matrix facilitating all communications between the TOC, unilateral broadcasters and Portuguese Telecomm.
Engineering Expertise
A Technical Operation Centre Manager and Onsite Engineer were provided at each venue tasked with taking care of unilateral broadcasters signal distribution requirements. This consisted of managing the hub in a way that supports the multi-lateral OB van; responsible for producing world feed, the host unilateral OB vans; responsible for studio and stand up positions and onsite European unilateral broadcasters. In addition we provided 4 VTR teams consisting of 1 engineer and 2 VT operators who rotated between the 10 venues with 2 x Sony MSW-M2000's and 1 x Panasonic AJD960 VTR's. EBS provided this facility to broadcasters enabling them to feed the tapes back to their IBC for editing.
Cable & Wiring
Gearhouse Broadcast provided all broadcast cabling at each venue for the multi-lateral and uni-lateral coverage which comprised camera triax cables, audio multi-ways; field microphone cabling and all studio cabling required in the stadium. The level of cable being installed includes 300km of triax cable,150km of 8-way audio-multi, 150 km of video cable and 100km of single audio. In terms of TOC wiring over 10,000 BNC connectors will be used, 50km of video cable and over 500 Krone audio blocks. More than 150 video jack fields and 80 audio bantum jack fields will be used in the 10 TOC systems/racks.
Commentary Information Systems
Gearhouse Broadcast carried out the installation of an RF CATV system for commentary areas, used by the commentators for viewing match statistics and data supplied by the graphics company.
Testimonial
"We have chosen Gearhouse Broadcast to provide this service and equipment for a number of reasons including the strong personal engagement of their senior technical staff in this project, the reliability and flexibility of the solutions offered, their solid experience in world sports events and, last but not the least, the overall cost of the offer." Jose Manuel Nunes, Executive Manager EBS 2004
