Nep Australia, BT Partner in Live 4K Cricket Broadcasts
NEP Australia and BT Media and Broadcast teamed up to deliver seven key live-to-air 4K matches in the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup for host broadcaster Star Sports India and its direct-to-home (DTH) partners.
For the series, which spanned Feb. 8-March 29 from Adelaide, Perth, Sydney, and Melbourne, NEP undertook all facilitation, production, and direction services for the seven live 4K broadcasts. BT provided its international fiber services to deliver the HD world feed for international distribution as well as the 4K fiber circuits between the Australian venues and India.
NEP and BT devised a hybrid 4K-HD technical and production solution, allowing the Star India network to offer its world feed to DTH subscribers in both HD and 4K. The tandem 4K-HD production meant that material captured by 4K cameras could be integrated with the world-feed production, eliminating the need for additional cameras.
NEP Australia Project Director Andrew Quinn says, “When three companies with the experience and caliber of Star Sports, BT, and NEP come together with the goal of being the first to deliver live 4K TV coverage of cricket into people’s homes in India, each and every person on the project was committed to it being a success. With the NEP worldwide network’s ongoing investment in 4K, this style of 4K production and delivery can be offered to all of NEP’s clients.”
Says Sanjay Bhat, head of sales, Asia Pac, BT Media & Broadcast, “It’s been great to work with NEP and Star TV to provide this service. Broadcasting the cricket live in 4K was a real success and brilliant for all the fans of the sport.”
The project involved the following:
- NEP’s HD4K super truck with 3G and 4K options
- A Sony MVS8000X 4K switcher with replay transition
- Nine Sony F55 4K full-sensor cameras
- An I-MOVIX 4K ultra-high-motion camera
- 4K Steadicam
- 4K EVS workflow for multicam record, replay, highlights and archiving
- 4K-video-file transfer: EVS to edit and back file-based workflow
- Alston Elliot 4K graphics
- Dolby 5:1 program audio
- 4K upconversion: specialized HD camera shots from the world HD feed
- Seamless integration of the 4K production and HD host broadcaster feed
- UHD standard: 3840×2160, p50, 4:2:2, 10-bit