BT revamps London tower facility with Snell router

BT in London has installed a Snell Sirius 830 routing system and three MV-Series multiviewers to support outside broadcasting operations  the BT Tower facility in London. The Snell equipment is a central component in BT’s efforts to upgrade its OB capabilities and maintain the high reliability of main video throughput for its media and broadcast service. London-based VSC Design provided systems integration and installation for the project.

“In upgrading our routing equipment, we focused on technology that would be capable of providing carriage for a range of high-performance video services, such as 3G-HD, HD-SDI, SDI, and DVB-ASI, without impacting the signal,” says Steve Bintley, TVOB Tower manager for BT’s TV, Media, and Content division. “Based on our long-term experience with Snell equipment, we knew we could depend on the Sirius 830 to provide the reliability and power we need for live sports and other high-viewership programming.”

BT maintains a multi-standard switching network infrastructure that provides routing capabilities for DVB-ASI, SDI, HD-SDI, analog video, and audio signals. Replacing BT’s original TVOB routers, which had reached their end of life, the 3G-compliant, 288×288 Sirius 830 is used to manage TVOB feeds through Snell’s Centra Workbench, which provides a unified environment for controlling and monitoring the routers and the three MV-Series multiviewers.

“We have worked with BT and Snell for many years, having previously supplied and installed a Snell routing switcher for BT’s sports-production facilities,” explains VSC Managing Director Martyn Hales. “The timescale for delivery of the TVOB routing switcher and associated infrastructure was very tight, but Snell was able to deliver quickly. The close collaboration between the BT, Snell, and VSC project-management teams ensured the system was up and running on time.”

Alan Smith, product manager for routers at Snell, says the Sirius 830, has high-performance modules that enable flexible routing of a wide range of signal types — a critical success factor in BT’s TVOB operations. In addition, the router’s advanced hybrid processing takes audio routing and processing and allows users to route any combination of embedded, discrete, and MADI sources and destinations.