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New 'rack n' roll' unit for SuperSport in Kenya Thursday 12th Apr 2012 : : C2S exhibited at CABSAT Wednesday 01st Feb 2012 : : C2S Delivers dual-truck OB's to SuperSport Tuesday 15th Nov 2011 : : Mercedes Vario in stock - ready now Friday 12th Aug 2011 : : Studio in a box Friday 17th Jun 2011 : : C2S exhibiting at Broadcast Asia, Singapore Friday 20th May 2011 : : C2S expands workforce with new appointments Tuesday 19th Apr 2011 : : Joiz TV Virtual Reality Studio launches in Switzerland Tuesday 19th Apr 2011 : : Supersport HD OB1 acceptance completed Wednesday 27th Apr 2011
Media Hub
Outside Broadcast
Client:
SuperSport OB Trucks
The SuperSport Challenge
As for any sports channel, outside broadcasting (OB) is a major part of SuperSport’s operation, and they wanted to expand.
The broadcaster wanted to enhance their coverage of Nigerian football and basketball by broadcasting in HD, while freeing up their existing fleet to cover other sports. They needed two new OB units with a design that would give them versatility, scalability and cutting-edge performance.
With a developing local skill-set in Nigeria, SuperSport needed their new OB’s, to be as user-friendly as possible. Ease of set-up, ease of use, and ease of upgrade were factors that needed to be addressed by the system design.
Africa’s roads are often difficult to tackle with larger vehicles, being narrow with sharp-corners, frequently in poor condition. SuperSport needed all the functionality of state-of-the-art OB units, in a more mobile and versatile form.
The C2S Solution.
Instead of the usual single-truck solution using articulated trailer-lorries, common for OB in Europe and the US, C2S Systems designed the integration around two smaller and more mobile rigid chassis trucks that would be able to join together once on location, and that would be easier to maneuver on Nigerian roads.
“The real challenge and the unique element of this build was joining the two trucks to give a seamless overall system,” commented Jonathan Lyth, C2S Systems’ head of projects. “Connecting the two had to be easy and relatively quick for operators on location, so we based the interconnection around 4 duplex fibre cables capable of carrying a total of 96 bi-directional HD-SDI signals and intercom. Audio is carried by eight 64 channel madi streams over copper, which integrated directly into the router.
“Because the local skill-set is still developing, these units will generally be used by less experienced operators than might be found elsewhere, so we factored this into the overall design, using a customised control solution to help simplify both operational and engineer tasks, while still allowing for upgrade and expansion in the future.”
Four Mercedes Axor-R 2529’s were selected as the truck model for the OB units with two further vehicles being provided for support.
Each pair of trucks was designed with twenty HD system cameras, including one super slow motion, plus two HD box cameras on robotic heads. Dolby D and E encoding would enable 5.1 audio capabilities. The units would provide all the functionality of a single truck with the advantage of additional operator space and an on-board uplink, removing the need for an extra satellite van.
The Result:
The first pair of trucks, OB1, was delivered in April 2011, and went into operation from October.
“We knew C2S Systems had right team in place to design and build the units to the standard we were after” Andre Venter, Director of SuperSport Media Solutions Africa, said. “We very were impressed by their commitment to understanding the intricacy of our operations, designing a solution to perfectly suit our needs. We needed mobility and scalability as well as space, so there were a lot of problems to solve.”
The ability to view Nigeria’s most popular sports in HD with 5.1 has been highly anticipated and rapidly adopted in the region.
“Our mission is to provide viewers with the highest quality picture & audio possible: with these new OB units, C2S Systems are helping us to deliver this promise to our audience,” Venter said. “The new OB’s have brought order where there was previously chaos. We couldn’t happier.”
The second unit, OB3, was delivered in November 2011.
The Proof:
Equipment used:
Snell Interfacing / Routing / Control System
Sony Camera systems HXC300 / HDC1550 / HDC3300
Sony Vision MVS8000 2.5ME
Yamaha M7CL Audio mixer OB1
Lawo MC56 Audio mixer OB3
EVS XT2+ / XT3 Replay servers and networking
Sony Monitoring
Evertz VIPA8 and VIPA16 Multiviewers and CDWM Fibre Mux systems, plus SPG system. C2s
Routing system
