Montreux Jazz Venues Rely on Riedel MediorNet

WUPPERTAL, GERMANY — The Montreux Music and Convention Centre (2m2c) used a Riedel MediorNet video and data signal transport network solution during the 47th Montreux Jazz Festival.

The organizers used the Riedel system to distribute signals throughout the various concert halls of the festival, which attracts an audience of more than 200,000 people and covers six venues. The facility also plays host to a number of events in Montreux including the Montreux Comedy Festival and more than 85 others.

“Our demands have changed drastically over the years,” said Pierre-Yves Nussbaum, audiovisual and multimedia facilities manager at 2m2c, responsible for the overall production of the jazz festival. “In 1997, we started with only seven network connections. Since then, and with the help of our MediorNet infrastructure, the system has grown to a capacity of more than 1,200 links, plus a fair number of A/V channels."

The city of Montreux now uses the fiber-based MediorNet infrastructure for combined distribution and transmission of A/V and IP signals over a decentralized network. This infrastructure also allows for transporting the video signals for internal DVB-T TV distribution.

“The flexibility of the systems helped us meet a lot of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s A/V demands. The decentralized control system made it possible to distribute the various sources to the video walls and projectors we were using, and also helped us administer our internal TV programs — all capabilities that we'd been waiting for,” Nussbaum said. “The École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne has been assigned to administer and preserve the entire library of video material from the festival — more than 5,000 hours worth — so our goal is to expand the MediorNet infrastructure into the EPFL campus to enable direct access to this precious material.”