Europe, Gearhouse Broadcast, Customer Driven, Technology Focused, Best of Breed
Event: World Cup 2006
Client: HBS, Seimens/BBC, ESPN, TYC
BBC Studio & International Broadcast Centre Facility Gearhouse Broadcast was briefed by the BBC to deliver a tailored broadcast specification, the system was then designed, built and installed on site. This project entailed two major facilities, namely the BBC Master control and production centre in the international broadcast centre (IBC) in Munich and secondly the BBC Studio in Berlin which the BBC used for the majority of their live coverage. The IBC master control area included EVS and Avid server systems, video tape archiving, videotape/server play outs, non-linear and linear editing, production control room utilising the latest Kahuna 2ME HD vision mixer and also the master engineering areas for sound and vision. The studio in Berlin consisted of six HD Thomson cameras, production control room with Kahuna 4ME HD vision mixer, EVS and Avid Servers, videotape playouts, non-linear and linear editing and master engineering set up for audio and vision.
HBS Technical Operation Centres
A key contract at the World Cup delivered solutions for HBS where Gearhouse Broadcast designed, built and supplied twelve Technical Operation Centres (TOCs), one for each of the stadium venues where the matches were played out. A project engineer was assigned to each TOC. The project was challenging due to its scale and the complexity of the logistics at the twelve venues across Germany. The TOC, the centre of signal flow at each venue, was the master technical control centre for each venue and the interface between telecom, broadcasters, host broadcaster and the international broadcasting centre in Munich. The TOC�s were also the master distribution and quality control centre at each venue ensuring that the high standards of broadcast quality were met. The TOC looked after both HD and SD signal distribution and quality monitoring at each venue.
HBS Cable Installations
The company also carried out cable installation solutions for HBS installing all unilateral and multi-lateral cabling at each of the twelve venues which amounted to 5000 miles of cable. The cabling included 11mm and 14mm coaxial camera triax cable, SMPTE 311 fibre optic HD camera cable, video coaxial cable, audio multi-ways and data cable. Delivering the signals was an involved process which required the use of three different standards of triax connectors, numerous bnc, and audio and fibre connectors. It took twelve teams of wiremen to terminate all the various connectors at each of the twelve stadiums.
From as early as April four rigging teams moved between venues rigging and installing cable. The provision of multi lateral cabling allowed for the production of the world feeds. All signals were set up to pass from the multilateral outside broadcast vans to all broadcasters for bookable facilities via the Technical Operation Centre. The signals also interfaced with all incoming and outgoing feeds from each venue via the local telecommunications supplier. In addition Gearhouse Broadcast provided HBS with broadcast partner cabling at each venue for broadcasters to produce their own style and flavour of their transmission back to their home countries. A wide variety of ancillary services were also catered for in the TOC�s such as tape play outs, signal conversion, audio multiplexing and de�multiplexing, camera stand ups, presentation and interview studios.
