Norway’s OB Team Upgrades Three Trucks

By Kevin Hilton

OB Team, the outside broadcast division of Norwegian commercial broadcaster TV2, has upgraded three trucks in its fleet to meet the challenges of major sporting events this year. OB61 is among the oldest vehicles owned by OB Team and had its engineering section redesigned in time to work on the FIS Alpine Skiing World Cup at Kvitfjell in central Norway.

The work was undertaken by systems integrator Broadcast Networks, whose engineers reduced the number of SD cameras accommodated by OB61 from 12 to eight, making way for more VTs and EVS machines. Other new equipment includes a DVD rack and a tally controller.

The three upgraded trucks operate in SD, but the third to be re-engineered, OB64, now features a multiformat Sony vision mixer ready for a later move to HD. OB64 houses 16 cameras and additional EVS workstations and servers. The truck also has a greater router capacity of 180×128 through an NVision NV8288 high-density switcher with enhanced control functions.

The most complex refurbishment was of OB66, which was originally a tender vehicle, not a scanner. “Desks and racks had already been installed by the coachbuilders before we got to work,” says Broadcast Networks engineer Chris King. “Our job was to transform it into a six-camera SD truck using some new equipment and some equipment that had been recovered from another decommissioned vehicle.”

Broadcast Networks built OB Team’s two HD trucks in 2006 and, on this occasion, worked at the OB company’s headquarters to upgrade the three SD vehicles. Says Espen Froysa, technical director of OB Team, “We now have a fleet that is technically up-to-date and ready to face any production challenge.”