NEP Installs 30 Cobalt Digital openGear Multiviewer Cards for Boxing Coverage

Cobalt Digital announced that NEP has installed 30 of their openGear multiviewer cards in NCPXIV B, a mobile unit support truck dedicated to supporting coverage of boxing for one of NEP’s premiere clients. The installation was part of a scheduled rebuild of NCPXIV B, which previously had no multiviewer on board. The newly refurbished truck has already supported coverage of several fights, and will be in Las Vegas on March 28th for its next show.

“The functional density of the Cobalt multiviewer solution gave us more flexibility than just using quad splits, and because a single card can do so much, we get more functionality per dollar and per square inch. The whole 30-card array fits perfectly into the tight space inside the truck, and we can reconfigure things quickly, which saves setup time as we move from job to job,” said Robert Walsh, director of engineering for NEP’s U.S. Mobile Units Division. “We looked at a couple of different solutions before deciding what to buy and found that, with Cobalt, we did not have to sacrifice versatility for price. And Cobalt’s customer support has always been first-rate.”

NCPXIV B is a straight 53-foot B unit that is used to transport all of the client’s boxing equipment and set pieces for its larger boxing events. Once everything is unloaded at the venue, the truck is then used as the technical manager’s office and to house additional operators for client-supplied equipment.

In the original NCPXIV B truck design, monitors were either patched with straight signals or quad splits and other multiviewer feeds from the A unit. By installing 30 Cobalt 9970-QS 3G/HD/SD-SDI/CVBS Quint-Split Multi-Image Expandable Display Processor cards, each of which integrates five discrete 3G/HD/SD-SDI or CVBS inputs onto a single 3G/HD/SD-SDI quint-split output, NEP operators have the versatility to take feeds from the main truck and display them in many different ways. The cards can insert each input image flexibly into the output image area, which further contributes to their versatility.

NEP also installed three Cobalt HPF-9000 openGear frames to house the multiviewer cards. These high-density frames house all 30 of NEP’s multiviewer cards in just six rack units of space. The 9970-QS multiviewer card is capable of auto-detecting composite analog up to 1080p, 50 or 60 HZ. The five input expandable modular design is perfectly suited for popular 2×2 and 3×3 screen layouts and larger.

“An order from NEP is what established Cobalt Digital as a company 18 years ago, and we’ve enjoyed a strong working relationship with them ever since,” said Bob McAlpine, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Cobalt Digital. “Now we’ve collaborated once again to design a multiviewer solution that gives NEP the functions and versatility they need within the space and budget they had. This massive deployment of multiviewers demonstrates what’s possible inside a single mobile production truck.”