Gearing up for a bumper year of premier live sporting events, NEP Europe has bolstered its production capability with a host of Grass Valley live IP production solutions. NEP is growing its capabilities across its OB and flypacks fleet, strengthening its position as one of the world’s leading outsourced technical production partners to premier producers of live sports and entertainment.

At the core of the expansion are nearly 60 new Grass Valley LDX 86^N cameras. The new cameras feature Grass Valley’s built-in DirectIP capability which was developed in conjunction with NEP. This unique technology allows NEP to send only the camera heads to the given location, while all other control for the cameras and the production can take place at an off-site location. With this latest purchase, NEP Europe now has over 500 native 4K Grass Valley LDX 86^N cameras in its portfolio.

Paul Henriksen, NEP Europe’s president, said: “2020 is set to be a huge year for live sporting and entertainment events around the world. We’re excited about the opportunity to help clients deliver innovative live productions that bring consumers closer to the action, wherever they are and on any device. Drawing on our long-established relationship with Grass Valley, and the close collaboration with its R&D team, allows us to leverage best-in-class solutions that are a perfect fit. Grass Valley understands our business model and is unrivaled when it comes to delivering the support that we, and our clients, demand.”

NEP Europe also purchased 30 RefleX SuperXpander Kit lens adapters, which convert handheld cameras into a studio/field production system, plus a number of LDX C86^N compact cameras and several grass valley switchers including the 6 M/E Kahuna 9600 with Maverik control panel and the Kula 3 M/E switcher. The switchers feature FormatFusion technology, innovative, built-in format conversion that seamlessly handles multiformat operations. The wider rollout of Grass Valley’s K-Frame, Kahuna and Kula switchers across NEP’s fleet allows for standardized workflows that ensure greater efficiency across the group.

Mark Hilton, Grass Valley’s vice president of live production, commented: “We’re delighted to be working with NEP once again and proud to be the clear choice when it comes to supplying live IP production solutions. As NEP readies itself for a demanding year of exciting sports and live content, we very much look forward to working alongside the company in the thick of the action.”

Grass Valley’s IP solutions have been selected by Gravity Media to form an open standards-based IP core built – together with Cisco Nexus 9000 IP switches – as part of an upgrade to its live production capability. The deployment includes Grass Valley UCP-25/50 Gateway cards and MV-821-IP multiviewers as part of a wider roadmap to full IP migration by the global provider of complex live broadcast facilities and production services to content owners, creators and distributors. The system was deployed at the UEFA Europa League final in Baku, Azerbaijan on 29th May, 2019 and also formed the heart of the live production environment at the UEFA Champions League final in Madrid on 1st June, 2019. It was more recently used for the core of a Grand Slam tennis tournament.

As consumer demands for captivating viewing experiences place pressure on existing baseband environments, Grass Valley’s advanced IP solutions help customers transition to flexible, scalable infrastructures and smart, agile workflows. To evolve its live production capability, Gravity Media began migrating towards a live IP-based production environment at a major sporting event in Australia in January 2019, making use of Grass Valley IP multiviewers to handle its monitoring requirements. The new Grass Valley IP core enables Gravity Media to leverage a powerful, future-proofed production environment that is agnostic to evolving production needs and can adapt rapidly – even during an event.

“By taking an IP-based approach we have been able to vastly simplify the system. Now we can get the whole IP core up and running within a day – that is unheard of for a major sporting event,” explained Ed Tischler, acting managing director for the UK at Gravity Media. “As the frontrunner in the industry transition to IP, Grass Valley has the best pedigree, delivering the most accomplished solutions on the market. Their monitoring system is second to none and unlike solutions from other vendors – which require a lot of time spent in set up – with Grass Valley everything just works out of the box.”

Black Dragon Capital has completed an agreement with Belden Inc. in which it will acquire Grass Valley, a leading supplier of broadcast and media solutions for the production and distribution of high quality content worldwide. The deal, which will be finalized during Q1 2020, will transfer full control of all Grass Valley assets to Black Dragon, which plans to leverage Grass Valley’s intellectual property and talent to drive innovation and lead the industry’s migration to a software-based future.

What's New:

Sonnet Technologies today announced the Fusion™ Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID PCIe® 3.0 card, the latest product in the company's line of high-performance storage cards that enable the installation of SSDs into a computer's or Thunderbolt expansion system's PCIe card slot. The Fusion card includes a hardware RAID controller for drive configuration, plus an external USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C port with 15 watts of power.

What It Does:

The Fusion Dual 2.5-inch SSD RAID card enables users to install two 2.5-inch SATA SSDs (sold separately) into a full-length PCIe card slot. The attached SSDs are managed by the card's onboard RAID controller, which supports RAID 0, RAID 1, Span, and JBOD configurations and provides users a powerful tool for configuring the SSDs for best performance or data safety without impacting their system's performance. For added convenience, a USB-C port capable of supporting high-performance, bus-powered drives and other USB peripherals is included. The USB-C port also supports the USB 3.0 charging specification that enables simultaneous charging and syncing of an iOS® or iPadOS® device.

Grass Valley tops off a year of driving tighter industry collaboration and partnerships by winning the 2019 IABM Creative Collaboration Award. During 2019, Grass Valley cemented key projects and partnerships that have helped shape the industry. The company also demonstrated its commitment to driving innovation by establishing the Grass Valley Technology Alliance (GVTA).

Grass Valley’s president Tim Shoulders commented: “The broadcast industry is moving toward software-based solutions and pay-as-you-go environments, and our customers need partners that make this transition easier for them. A collaborative approach is central to extending our portfolio and facilitating pre-certified interoperable solutions that help our customers succeed in this new market landscape. We’ve made this is a strategic priority going forward, to work more with other vendors and deliver best-in-breed workflows.”

This commitment to collaboration is epitomized by the world’s largest remote/at-home production – the 2019 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, held in Åre, Sweden, which earned Grass Valley, along with partners Arista, ClearCom, Net Insight and Sveriges Television (SVT), the IABM Creative Collaboration Award. The Grass Valley-centric remote workflow deployed during the championship seamlessly handled 80 uncompressed HD camera signals and 100 feeds. Signals were delivered from the venue to SVT’s Stockholm headquarters – more than 372 miles away – via Grass Valley’s DirectIP connectivity. The remote production solution significantly reduced set-up time and generated cost savings of ten percent.

In the two renewed multipurpose control rooms, Director's Cut creates the Finnish national programmes for international sporting events (e.g. football Champions League, ice hockey or tennis). Director's Cut's primary customer is MTV3, Finland's largest private television station.

After the successful implementation, it is now possible to produce up to six Finnish-language programme feeds simultaneously from two multipurpose control rooms with only two producers. One Mainfeed and two Sidefeeds can be produced per control room. Audio processing takes place in a Lawo Powercore. Control is via Lawo VisTool user interfaces and an 8-fader Ruby console for the Mainfeed and via two 4-fader Ruby consoles for the two Sidefeeds.

Broadcast Solutions created the VisTool interfaces especially to meet the individual workflows of Director's Cut. The new facility also includes six commentator booths equipped with Lawo LCUs and 43" Sony monitors.

The Royal Television Society Thames Valley Centre will host its second TVC Awards at their 29^th Winter Ball at Wokefield Estate, Mortimer, Reading. This year seventeen outstanding nominees have made it through to the shortlist in categories consisting of Community Improvement, Young Technologist, Production/Craft, Technology/Support and Media Hero.

Tony Orme, Chair RTS TVC said, ‘The quality of the award entries this year has been outstanding. These awards aim to focus on people within our industry, people who make a real difference – be that individuals or companies. This year our judging panels will have some very tough decisions to make! We wish all our finalists the very best of luck.’

The award winners will be announced at the Winter Ball on Friday 29^th November 2019.

Grass Valley today announces it will showcase its applications-driven suite of solutions at Broadcast India 2019, (October, 17-19, stand E-503) underscoring how it enables broadcasters, rights holders and media service providers to create, manage and deliver captivating and immersive content that engages audiences on any device.

Grass Valley today announces that UK broadcast equipment supplier, rental house and systems integrator, ES Broadcast, has made the single biggest purchase of its LDX 86N 4K UHD cameras to date. The Watford-based company has invested in 151 cameras and 15 Kahuna production switchers to prepare for major sporting events in 2020 and to meet increasing demand for UHD.

AV and entertainment technology company, Anna Valley, announced today that they are the solution architects and technology providers for the mixed reality “window on the world” feature in ITV’s Rugby World Cup 2019 studio. The studio in Maidstone is the base from which the host broadcaster will provide insight and analysis on the Rugby World Cup 2019 tournament, from the opening fixture on 20 September, through to the final on 2 November 2019.