Arena Television To Roll Out 4K UHD Trucks With All-IP Infrastructure From Grass Valley

Arena Television is one of the UK’s leading outside broadcast service providers, supporting a prestigious range of sports and events clients with a fleet of more than 20 fully equipped OB trucks plus the associated services of Arena Aviation. The family-owned company, in business since 1989, is making the move to 4K UHD and embracing developments in IP-based video production with its three new trucks that will be rolling out over the next year. To realize this vision, Arena turned to Grass Valley, a Belden Brand.

Arena is one of the first OB companies in Europe to embrace 4K UHD production based on an IP infrastructure in a broadcast truck. Grass Valley will supply the key product solutions in the three planned trucks, OBX, OBY, and OBZ. OBX is the first truck to be equipped with this new technology. The second truck, OBY, is due later in 2016 and OBZ will follow in 2017. Arena is working closely with systems integrator Videlio to design and outfit the trucks.

“This is a very significant investment. We believe that basing our infrastructure on emerging technology will deliver the most powerful and advanced OB trucks in the world, capable of providing the service and flexibility customers will be expecting and demanding in the coming years,” says Richard Yeowart, group managing director of Arena. “For us, the key to success in this project was partnering with a company that provides a breadth of IP solutions and understands the need to maintain the high level of production capabilities that our clients have come to expect. Grass Valley was the right choice.”

Arena has committed to purchasing the new LDX86^N Series native 4K cameras with XF Fiber base stations. Other equipment powering the trucks includes one Kayenne K-Frame Video Production Center switcher with two panels (panels and frames are cross-compatible for cost-effective repurposing), two GV Convergent IP/SDI Router Control and Configuration Systems with SDN license, iControl Customized End-to-End Facility Monitoring, Densité 3+ FR4 Frames with IPG-3901 High Density SDI/IP Gateways, and GV Node IP Processing and Edge Routing Platforms with Kaleido KMX-4911 cards enabling expansion up to an 18×2 multiviewer.

The first of the new fleet, OBX is designed to support 32-camera productions and utilize end-to-end IP connectivity. The design is based around a Cisco IP switch, of which the core infrastructure is fiber, running 10GigE and where enabled, 40GigE. The architecture provides the ultimate production flexibility where existing baseband systems can seamlessly integrate with the new IP-enabled workflows. In addition, OBX is fully Future Ready, allowing adoption of greater network speeds as they become available.

At launch, the IP workflow will utilize SPMTE ST 2022-6 and is designed to take advantage of emerging video and audio IP standards such as VSF TR03/04, which Grass Valley is fully supporting through the AIMS initiative. Arena is running 4K UHD over 10GigE with Grass Valley’s 4K 1-Wire solution that uses TICO compression. In addition to leveraging open standards, OBX is also Future Ready with regard to formats, able to accommodate emerging formats such as HDR. OBX will run UHD 2Si which provides significant benefits in resilience and monitoring for client confidence, and is able to integrate Quad-Link if required.

Latency and timing are critical in live productions and Grass Valley’s awareness of the end-to-end production requirements, careful system design, adoption of technologies and targeted research and development in products such as GV Node for low latency and vertically accurate switching, contribute to this fleet of cutting-edge OB trucks and give Arena clients the production facilities they demand today, with flexibility to develop their productions in the future.

“Arena is a great example of a company that is looking to the future, making decisions and investments that will position them well to deliver content that stands above what is currently on the market,” explains Jan-Pieter van Welsem, VP of sales and marketing, Grass Valley. “A lot of thought and planning went into this move, and knowing that our solutions are playing a key role is very gratifying.”