Of the five new UHD OB vans that NEP Europe has ordered from Broadcast Solutions, one will be likely Europe’s largest. The announcement follows the order placed with Broadcast Solutions at the recent IBC Show in Amsterdam.
Four of the new OBs will be 8-12 camera vehicles, while the fifth will be a triple-expanding trailer capable of handling more than 30 cameras. The smaller models will be based on Broadcast Solutions’ Streamline family concept, with pre-configured and nearly ‘off-the-shelf’ OB vans. With the Streamline approach to OB van construction, the German company reckons to have changed building an OB van from a project to a product. The results are short delivery times and standardised overall designs, key for fast set-up times during productions.
The four smaller production vehicles will either be based on the Streamline S8, as used for HD34K, or the S12 4K, used for UHD-41, Broadcast Solutions developed for NEP Germany and NEP Switzerland recently. Being NEP’s latest UHD OB van, HD34K works with up to eight UHD cameras – NEP Switzerland’s UHD-41 is presently in use with Swisscom Teleclub for its coverage of Swiss football. The UHD-41 truck is a Streamline S12 using a new room layout but a typical Streamline audio/video system. Both trucks have Grass Valley switchers and use the 2SI (two sample interleave) Quad Link format of UHD.
NEP Europe has opted for full 4K in all vehicles, as Paul Henriksen, President NEP Broadcast Services Europe, confirms: ‘We see 4K is starting to develop in Europe, and now is the time to stop building normal HD OB vans.’
‘After we have just delivered six Streamline OB vans (two as 4K versions) to NEP Europe within this year, we are very pleased with NEP’s new order,’ adds Broadcast Solutions CEO, Stefan Breder. ‘Even more since one of the five new trucks, which is part of the order, will be one of Europe’s largest OB vans.’
Since the schedule is demanding, work on the trucks will start within in the next few weeks. Timing is paramount to this project and Broadcast Solutions is confident to deliver in time – HD34K took three months from order to delivery. Over the past five years Broadcast Solutions has built more than 20 OB vans for NEP in total.
