Euromedia Equips OB Van 740 with Apantac TAHOMA Multiviewers

Apantac LLC, designer and developer of high quality, cost effective multiviewers and signal processing equipment announced that Euromedia, one of Europe’s leading outside broadcast contractors has equipped it’s OB Van 740 with TAHOMA-LE high definition Multiviewers and MT HOOD DVI Receivers.

Ten high definition TAHOMA-LE Multiviewers are used with slim high resolution LCD displays to replace CRT monitor stacks and are being used to visually monitor HD video and audio signals throughout the vans’ four operational areas.

Three TAHOMA-LE-32HD Multiviewers are used for the OB Van’s production switcher / director monitor wall, one TAHOMA-LE-20HD and one TAHOMA-LE-32HD are used for the five Camera Control positions and technical monitoring, two TAHOMA-LE-16HD are used for the four VTR control positions, one TAHOMA-LE-28HD and one TAHOMA-LE-32HD are used for the six Slo-Mo control, producer and production assistant positions. Finally, one TAHOMA-LE-4HD is used in the audio room. Together, they offer the production crew and technical manager an effective way to visually monitor signals in a space-restrictive area.

The TAHOMA-LE HD Multiviewers integrate seamlessly with the existing equipment in Euromedia’s OB 740 including; on board Grass Valley LDK-8000 HD Cameras, an XTEN HD Production Switcher, a Snell 180x216 HD/SD-SDI Routing Matrix, and EVS XT2+ Slo-Mo Servers. All the naming and tally management is handled by a TSL TallyMan TM2 Plus. The TAHOMA-LE HD Multiviewers drive six Penta 47” displays, eleven EIZO S2100 21” displays, and eight EIZO SX2262W 22” displays.

The TAHOMA platform incorporates a built-in Cat 5/6 extender, and coupled with the MT HOOD DVI-1-LR active long-distance receivers, the outputs of the Multiviewers can be extended up to 35 meters (115 feet) away.

The Euromedia 16.5-meter high-definition production OB van will be used throughout Europe for the upcoming Italian Football League production, as well as a variety of studio support applications.

“Apantac is our Multiviewer of choice for OB 740 due to its modular design, no single point of failure and a high level of redundancy,” comments Julien Schneider, Technical Manager for Euromedia. “We reviewed several manufacturers’ offerings, and Apantac provided us with the largest choice of inputs / outputs per chassis, which offers us great flexibility in our monitoring applications. Ultimately, they provided us with the optimum multi-image display processing solution for our needs.”

The technical team for OB 740 is able to configure and control their Multiviewer system from a single GUI using the Apantac Director Software. This central control provides instant access to the configuration of any display, and last minute production changes can be made in real-time. Up to 30 different production configurations can be saved or recalled almost instantly, and combined with TSL Tallyman, makes for a flexible monitoring solution. Each Multiviewer can also be controlled via the front panel buttons, a simple preset panel, the Apantac ASCII protocol, or with a Control Module with GPI inputs assigned to presets.

Apantac’s TAHOMA platform of Multiviewers utilizes an easy to use skin technology, which allows Euromedia to customize the on-screen display of graphics including; borders, labels, fonts, tally LEDs, clock faces, logos, embedded audio, discrete audio meters and audio / video alarms. Video windows on the display may include multiple labels, and support UMD, OMD, IMD and standalone labels.

Apantac’s French dealer, Magic Hour, with Jeff Ferriol, sales and Nordine Sekouri, technical support dealt with the sales, installation and support for this project.