Belgian Outside Broadcast Adds Grass Valley HD Cameras to Arsenal

By Kevin Hilton

Belgian OB company Outside Broadcast has bought 29 Grass Valley HD cameras, which will be used by all its trucks. This is shaping up to be a busy year for the company, with a new small production unit going on the road soon, upgrades to Units 9, 14 and two flyaway packages and a roster of high profile sporting events, including the recently completed Champions League ice hockey final in Switzerland.

Outside Broadcast ordered 28 LDK 8000 Elite WorldCams and one LDK 8300 Super SloMo camera in April this year and these will be available to all vehicles, ranging from the big Unit 14, which now features Avitech multi-viewers, plus 3G input and output cards in its NVision router, to the smaller Unit 3. Under construction right now Unit 3 is based on a Mercedes Sprinter and will have positions for seven production/technical personnel.

The double-expanding Unit 9 has had its GVG Xtgend DD and HD E box configuration replaced with a Grass Valley HD350 vision mixer, while the flyaway systems, Units 10 and 12, now feature Leitch Panacea Clean switchers and Zandar Predator multi-viewers.

“Working with the wide variety of clients that we do we need a camera that provides superior image quality in all HD formats and that’s exactly what we’re getting with the new Grass Valley cameras,” commented Ronald Meyvisch, technical and operations manager of Outside Broadcast.

Among Outside Broadcast’s contracts for this year are the final of the Champions League ice hockey season, which took place last Sunday (May 10) in Berne, Switzerland, Belgian Premier League football, the European cross country championship, to be held in Dublin during December, and UEFA Champions League qualifying matches, which begin in June.