Gearhouse shoots for broadcast success at Euro 2004 Brian Coleman
Gearhouse Broadcast equipment rental and sales and projects solutions have signed a contract with host broadcaster EBS 2004 for the supply of the 10 Technical Operation Centres and respective technical staffing as well as cabling for all the Portuguese stadia where UEFA Euro 2004 matches will be played.
This is one of Gearhouse’s most complex projects to date with 10 stadiums to cover, split across 8 towns, over 22 days—kick off commenced on Saturday 12th June, and the final to be held on Sunday 4th July.
Utilising their existing inventory as well as having made substantial investment in additional broadcast equipment Gearhouse Broadcast will be providing the facilities that will be used to distribute the International Signal to all rights holders at all venues for this event.
Installation of equipment and cabling commenced 4 weeks prior to the kick off date at each venue. Over 70 crew members were recruited for the installation and rigging phases and will be rotated between venues depending on the complexity and size of the installation.
Gearhouse Broadcast will be supplying the TOCs which act as the main hub between the multi-lateral OB vans, the IBC, the onsite Broadcasters and Portuguese Telecomm. The typical set up and provision of equipment at the 10 Operation Centres will consist of 64x 64 video and audio routing matrixes for main signal switching with large amounts of video and audio distribution amplifiers provided by Leitch and DTL.
There will be four video and audio monitoring positions at each venue which will consist of SDI waveform vectorscopes, audio test and measurement equipment and Sony BVM 14 inch grade “A” monitors. A variety of glue products will be supplied incorporating, Framestore synchronisers, A-D converters and D-A converters, audio embedders and de-embedders and AES embedders and de-embedders.
Gearhouse Broadcast will also be providing a communications matrix facilitating all communications between the TOC, unilateral broadcasters and Portuguese Telecomm.
Each venue will be provided with 2 engineers from Gearhouse Broadcast who will act as Technical Operation Centre Managers and Onsite Engineers. They will be tasked with taking care of unilateral broadcasters’ signal distribution requirements. This will consist of managing the hub in a way that supports the multi-lateral OB van responsible for producing the world feed, the host unilateral OB vans responsible for studio and stand up positions and the onsite European unilateral broadcasters.
Additionally Gearhouse Broadcast are providing 4 VTR teams consisting of 1 engineer and 2 VT operators who will rotate between the 10 venues with 2 x Sony MSW-M2000s and 1 x Panasonic AJD960 VTR. This will act as a facility that EBS will offer to broadcasters who can then feed the tapes back to their IBC for editing.
Gearhouse Broadcast are providing all the cabling at every venue for the multi-lateral and uni-lateral coverage; this will include, camera triax cables, audio multi-ways, field microphone cabling and all studio cabling required in the stadium.
The level of cable being installed includes 300km of triax cable, 150km of 8-way audio-multi, 150 km of video cable and 100km of single audio. For the TOC wiring: over 10,000 BNC connectors will be used, 50km of video cable and over 500 Krone audio blocks. More than 150 video jack fields and 80 audio bantam jack fields will be used in the 10 TOC systems racks.
An additional service that Gearhouse Broadcast is offering at Euro 2004 is the installation of a RF CATV system for commentary areas that will be utilised by the commentators for viewing match statistics and data supplied by the graphics company.
According to Eamonn Dowdall , Managing Director for Gearhouse Broadcast, “we are thrilled to once again be involved in an area we specialise in, working for a host broadcaster.
We have a strong track record for provision of broadcast equipment, facilities and crew for major sporting events requiring intensive project management skills across a geographic expanse.”
Commenting from EBS 2004, Jose Manuel Nunes, Executive Manager says “we have chosen Gearhouse Broadcast to provide this service and equipment for a number of reasons including the strong personal engagement of their senior technical staff in this project, the reliability and flexibility of the solutions offered, their solid experience in world sports events, and last but not the least, the overall cost of the offer.”
