Harris Broadcast is gearing up for a major tactical support
operation at next year’s global soccer tournament in Brazil. The
company will support the host broadcaster, HBS, and its prime and
technical contractors – Sony Professional and sono Studiotechnik –
with equipment and services.
Harris Broadcast will also provide complete mobile production solutions
for the main Brazilian broadcasters and content generators during the games,
in addition to supporting regional broadcasters that will cover the games
and FunFest events, powering outdoor video screens at each participating
venue to entertain fans. In addition, Harris Broadcast's regional support
team in Brazil and greater Latin America will be on site throughout the
games, and provide pre-event equipment commission, configuration services
and operations training.
Earlier this summer, German broadcast systems integrator and
international rental company, Munich-based sono Studiotechnik, returned from
Brazil where it had provided one of its revolutionary new fly-away
production facilities based on Harris Broadcast technology at the
traditional curtain raiser – the Confederations Cup. Next year, this
technology will be scaled up to a national level and used at 12 different
locations in Brazil to provide high quality venue broadcast facilities at
football stadia around the country.
Supporting each fly-away facility – which fits into a single 40ft
shipping container - is Harris Broadcast’s new Platinum® IP3 router. So
impressed was HBS with the performance and reliability of this production
tool during the Confederations Cup that it has placed an order for an extra
router to be positioned at the heart of the Rio-based International
Broadcast Center (IBC).
“Harris Broadcast is supplying routers, multiviewers, core processors and
glue products to the fly-away facilities – in short the backbone of these
advanced mobile TV production facilities,” commented Franz Olbert, chief
finance officer at sono Studiotechnik. “One big advantage of the IP3 is that
it comes with complete in-built crosspoint redundancy as standard, so we
only need one router in each container. Furthermore, the device’s
multi-format signalling capabilities, which enable it to accommodate
separate video, audio and data paths within the same frame, are very
interesting to us.
“We were very pleased with the performance of the Harris Broadcast
technology at this summer’s Confederations Cup. We have never before taken
on a project of the size and complexity of the one we have embarked on in
Brazil. We are on the road to Rio – we could not envisage starting this
project without the right technology partner. Harris Broadcast will play an
important role – it will be a very intense co-operation and we are looking
forward to making this journey together,” Olbert continued.
“Next summer, events in Brazil will generate some of the biggest global
TV viewing audiences ever. It takes a special type of organization to
facilitate this kind of event and Harris Broadcast is tremendously proud to
have been selected as technology provider to broadcasters and service
providers on several continents,” said Richard Scott, senior vice president,
Harris Broadcast. “Whether it is broadcasters and content generators in
Brazil or sono Studiotechnik in Germany, we will provide top level technical
and operational services and support through our global network.”
