Mobile TV Group Opens New Facility Complete With Modern Tech, Mountain Views

MTVG’s new facility located in the Denver suburb of Englewood, CO.

A Rocky Mountain panorama is not the typical view from a production-truck–engineering and –manufacturing plant. But Mobile TV Group’s new facility is not a traditional mobile-unit factory. Located in the Denver suburb of Englewood, CO, the two-story building boasts not only state-of-the-art technical facilities but also a scenic mountain view extending from Longs Peak to Pikes Peak.

“We wanted to build a true factory where we could efficiently manufacture mobile units,” says MTVG co-owner/GM Philip Garvin. “But it was equally important for us to build a really, really nice place so, when people spend all day putting connectors on cables and so forth, they have amazing daylight and a beautiful view, as well as proper air-conditioning and heating, which you can’t do in a traditional garage-type area.

Plenty of Space, Tech, Scenery
The new facility is equipped with five truck docks capable of handling a quintet of trucks at any given time — up from three at the previous facility. Around the truck engineering/manufacturing floor is a horseshoe of spaces dedicated to truck maintenance, fiber integration, wood shop, metal fabrications, and more. On the second floor, overlooking the truck bay, is a horseshoe of offices for operations and other personnel. A band of windows surrounds nearly the entire building on both floors, allowing loads of natural light in and revealing breathtaking views of the mountain landscape.

MTVG’s new facility can handle five trucks at once.

“We spent a lot of time with all our staff, figuring out how to improve on the old building,” says Garvin. “We build everything in our trailers; the only thing we buy is the outer shell and the expando mechanism. Since everything is built in-house — the laminates, the woods, the metals, even the racks — we wanted to make sure to create the best facility possible for our people.”

The new facility, which opened at the beginning of May, marks a substantial upgrade from MTVG’s previous, long-time facility in Denver’s Stapleton neighborhood, where AXS TV operations continue to be housed. The move also provided a much needed opportunity to review and refresh equipment and facilities.

“Knowing that the move was coming allowed us to clean house of older equipment and get rid of the things that we don’t need [but] that may have stuck around for 10 years,” says Director of Business Development Nick Garvin. “It’s something that you always put off, otherwise. It obviously took a lot of prep, but we were able to just take what we needed and make the move happen in a day or two.”

38FLEX Ready to Roll, 39FLEX Not Far Behind
The first new truck rolled out of the Englewood facility was MTVG’s much hyped 38FLEX unit, which is capable of producing 4K, 6X slo-mo, 1080p, or 720p/1080i on any given day. Demonstrated at NAB 2015 in April, 38FLEX is currently working a handful of shows in Colorado before its official launch in August. The mobile unit will be based in Dallas and assigned predominantly to Fox Sports Southwest productions.

The new 38Flex mobile unit was the first to roll out of MTVG’s new facility.

“It actually worked pretty well that we were all working to finish [38FLEX] for NAB, because, once that left, the staff started focusing on shutting everything down, packing, and so forth,” says Philip Garvin. “We lost only two or three weeks of manufacturing. We moved in May 1, and, a week later I would say, we were back up and running with manufacturing.”

Next up is 39FLEX, which is set to launch in December.

“Every truck we build from now on will be [a FLEX unit],” says Philip Garvin. “We’d like to see that be a full-time 4K truck, running around the country doing all 4K.”