NEP Broadcasting recently deployed SDI-over-fiber transport systems for its remote trucks covering the NFL's Sunday Night Football.
The teleproduction facilities and services provider recently purchased Studio Technologies' Model 400 SDI-over-fiber transport systems and integrated them into a second production truck covering the national Sunday Night Football broadcast.
"We created an additional production truck for Sunday Night Football because of the space restrictions within existing truck compounds," says George Hoover, chief technology officer for NEP Broadcasting.
"HD video has an effective transport link of about 300ft on copper, but, for this application, we needed the ability to potentially go several thousand feet away from our main production truck. The only option was optical fiber," he added.
NEP Broadcasting selected the Model 400 based on its past experience with the Studio Technologies units. NEP Broadcasting has used the transport system on a variety of projects including nearly 60 percent of NFL games, he added. The Model 400 is serving as the video interconnect backbone for the new trailer.
NEP's new trailer provides the technology that generates the virtual signage, lines and images that float on the field. It also handles the transport for all of the wireless and RF cameras between where they are received, processed and handed off to the main truck. The trailer also houses all the transmission hardware to get the signal back to the broadcaster. Reliability was extremely important because every camera and the outbound transmission path flowed through this fiber backbone.
The Model 400 is a rack-mount system for distributing digital video signals over short and medium distances. The system is compatible with all common broadcast serial digital video formats. It offers 12 format-independent SDI data paths over four single-mode optical fibers supporting 3G (SMPTE 424M), HD (SMPTE 292) and SD (SMPTE 259M) SDI, as well as DVB-ASI. Fiber transport is based on the SMPTE 297 standard.
