Sports and educational events among the applications for new Grass Valley-equipped OB van
With more than 90,000 students and four main colleges in Saudi Arabia, King Faisal University (KFU) has been serving the educational needs of the region for more than 40 years. The university maintains modern broadcasting capabilities and recently added a second, fully equipped OB van to its collection of resources.
Working with First Gulf Company (FGC), a local systems integrator, representatives from KFU chose a suite of solutions from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand.
“Choosing the supplier for the equipment in the new van was an easy process,” said Abduaziz Al-Sa’aty of KFU. “Our prior experience with Grass Valley was very positive, and the equipment meets and exceeds all of our needs for quality and reliability. Having a modern mobile unit with the best technology in the industry makes it valuable for our students and staff, as well as those looking to rent a solution from us.”
The new OB van includes six LDX 80 WorldCam camera systems for full 1080p production, a Kayenne K-Frame Video Production Center switcher, a K2 Summit 3G Production Client and other infrastructure components. The van is being used for educational events in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and is also available for third-party rental to cover conferences, sporting events and entertainment programmes.
“KFU is a leader in the region, and other universities are certainly watching to see what they do, so we expect that there will be increased demand for these kinds of solutions in the future,” noted Rahif Jneid, executive services manager, of First Gulf Company. “Our partnership with Grass Valley has been in place for a long time and we work closely with them to design and install the best broadcast solutions for our clients.”
The LDX 80 WorldCam is suitable for any production, under any condition, incorporating all the features of the LDX 80 Elite (1080i, 720p and 1080PsF) plus 1080p. The LDX 80 WorldCam enables 1080p productions that are normally impossible to cover without huge investments in additional lighting or without serious degradation of the image quality. Kayenne K-Frame brings the highest level of performance available to live productions with innovative features and upgradability, plus full multiformat support including 1080p and 4K. Kayenne can be configured with up to 192 inputs, 96 outputs and up to 9 M/Es with six keyers in every full M/E. K2 Summit 3G Production Clients are optimized for a broad range of production and broadcast applications and is the only server that supports end-to-end SD/HD workflows in DVCPRO, MPEG-2, AVC-Intra and H.264/AVCHD formats.
“Universities today are finding the need to offer advanced broadcasting solutions as they promote their own capabilities and train their students to go out into the workforce,” concluded Jan-Pieter van Welsem, vice president of sales and marketing, EMEA, Grass Valley. “New technology is making this an exciting time to be in the industry, and the students we are training on our equipment today are the ones who will be leading us in the future.”