Destined for major events, sports fixtures and other large-scale production work, Venus and Ceres are latest additions to NEP UK’s OB fleet and part of the world’s largest broadcast SMPTE ST 2110 IP system.

With Venus and Ceres, NEP believes it has created a new industry benchmark for OB platform topology, as the Arista switches provide ample data throughput and data linking capacity to realise NEP’s ‘single virtual truck concept’: ‘We needed to replace two of our older vehicles, which gave us the perfect opportunity to invest in our first future-resistant IP capable trucks,’ says NEP UK Engineering & Technical Director, Rob Newton.

The ST 2110 system infrastructure – which covers the carriage, synchronisation and description of streams over IP for real-time production, playout and other media applications – is identical in both vehicles. Each system is built around Grass Valley IQ UCP 25GbE Gateway cards, which provide two-way links between the IP-based equipment and existing baseband technology that is still needed to accommodate clients using SDI feeds. The trucks can also offer dual level UHD and HDI-SDI simultaneously.

Other equipment installed in each vehicle includes Calrec mixing desks, Grass Valley Kahuna vision mixers and Kayenne Video Production Centers, a Telex Talkback system, Arista 7504 IP switches and Axon Cerebrum control systems.

The other major differentiator for these vehicles is the significant reduction in cabling – the system requires far less fibre-optic cable compared to the miles of coaxial cable otherwise required, which proves quicker to integrate and is much lighter. The new equipment requires greater cooling; therefore, the truck design takes into account the ability to provide greater air conditioning and all equipment can be cooled separately in operational areas.

Venus and Ceres can also expand their capacity and facilities exponentially via modular connection with multiple IP flypacks. ‘This is the first time we’ve been able to effectively make our trucks larger – the only limit is the number of ports available on the switch,’ Newton explains. ‘We can put the truck in any location and connect multiple IP systems, be they our flypacks, our trucks or our media hubs, creating fully scalable and large broadcast system – the kind that you would only previously find in a fixed studio set up.’

Venus recently completed its first assignment, and both trucks will support major live events over the summer.

More: www.nepgroup.com