Consortium concept sees Exora expand broadcast services capability

Switzerland-based Exora has a strategic position in the heart of European broadcast services. The company provides a host of broadcast resources and expertise for sports and entertainment events, working both on central European commitments and in Italy for the personalisation of programming transmitted by RAI, Sky and Mediaset.

The company owns four OB vans and a wealth of equipment to carry out capture and satellite links, and provides independent DSNG technical resources.

The OB vehicles include a 16-camera OB van, another one handling up to 12 cameras, and two smaller vehicles capable of production tasks with up to five cameras each. All vehicles can shoot in HD. Respectively, the large vehicles are 12m and 10m long, both with expansion capability. The larger vehicle is often engaged in important events such as Serie A football.

Exora deals with football and a host of other sports, and was recently engaged in the World University Games, held in Trentino, and the European Rowing Championship. In addition, an agreement with Class Horse led Exora to produce several horse racing broadcasts transmitted throughout Europe.

Consortium concept

In December 2013, the Swiss company formed a technical resources consortium in recognition of the fact that several sports competitions are facing high costs in terms of operational resources, but are only using these resources on a fairly limited number of days.

So Exora established a consortium that includes four different companies. Among these are the French company AMP Visual and WorldLinx Alliance, a company which owns a special-purpose aircraft equipped with all the necessary equipment to carry out the functions of a TV repeater.

Within this new consortium are other smaller companies, one based in Britain and one in Finland, and collectively they are able to provide all the compatible and complementary technical resources necessary for outside and aerial filming and broadcasts.

For example, the motorbikes are equipped with HF devices that can also be installed on a motorcycle sled to shoot a cross-country race, or on a sailboat in the case of marine sports. The airplane is prepared to receive and deliver where necessary all the signals through dedicated high-frequency devices making use of auto-tracking antennas placed on the lower part of the fuselage.

Coordinated approach

With this venture, Exora is in a perfect position to offer the market a complete, coordinated service for all wireless filming needs – a quantity of enduring value in sports broadcast applications.

With this new and useful capability, the first work was carried out in March 2014 for RAI in a project to capture the whole series of ProTour cycling races that culminated with the Milan-San Remo.

Exora can also provide a Cineflex-equipped helicopter which can allow for a high frequency repeater and a shooting camera from above to be integrated into the system.

The consortium and tech facilities can also deploy a combination of high-frequency devices, including solutions from Swiss company Nulink, which has developed a highly efficient signal encoding algorithm to deliver improved output from high density areas such as cities.