NEP Germany increases engagement for basketball and ice hockey fans

Telekom Baskets Bonn

NEP Germany is working with CyanView and Dream Chip Technologies to create a solution that will help the company to bring new levels of creativity and viewer engagement to its coverage of basketball and ice hockey.

The equipment is being used for all Magenta Sport – My Team TV productions in Germany, including some 350 matches in the Basketball Bundesliga (BBL) and around 400 matches in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL).

Magenta Sport (until 2019 Telekom Sport) is a pay-TV service from Deutsche Telekom for various German and international sports leagues in the fields of basketball, football and ice hockey. The offer started in 2014 under the name Telekom Basketball when Telekom acquired multi-year broadcasting rights for the games of the German basketball Bundesliga. The games can be followed live or on demand via Telekom Entertain or in the browser or app on a tablet or smartphone.

NEP Germany has acquired 14 CyanView Cy-Ci0 RCP multi-camera remote control kits and 30 Dream Chip ATOM one cameras. For the basketball, two Dream Chip cameras are mounted on each hoop, and are controlled by the CyanView RCP. Cameras are similarly mounted to the goal frames for the ice hockey.

“NEP Group is well known as being among the most demanding in the broadcast industry when it comes to choosing not only the equipment we buy, but also the vendors we work with,” said Zlatan Gavran, managing director, NEP Germany.

“For us, it’s all about quality, and the solution from CyanView and Dream Chip allows us to deliver outstanding image quality that we do not believe we could have obtained elsewhere.”

“These deployments by NEP Germany are typical of the very simple workflows for which the CyanView RCP is eminently suitable, with only two cameras locally controlled by each RCP, but the CyanView RCP is also capable of supporting much more complex scenarios with control of an unlimited number of cameras remotely via IP (Wi-Fi and LAN),” said David Bourgeois, founder and CEO of CyanView.

Bourgeois went on: “This flexibility makes the CyanView RCP ideal for a broad range of sports applications. Whether it’s a simple or complex application, though, the image quality we are able to deliver are unmatched in the industry, and that makes the combination of CyanView’s control and Dream Chip’s image quality a very high-value solution for NEP.”

A single CyanView RCP allows the remote control of multiple mini-cameras of different types – including ENG, D-cinema and speciality cameras – and gives the vision engineer the opportunity to manipulate everything – iris, gain, black/white levels and so on – that could be controlled with direct access to the cameras. The RCP can even be used to ensure precise colour matching between cameras.

One of a broad range of mini cameras, the tiny (32mm x 32mm x 71mm, 100g) ATOM one from Dream Chip is among the smallest Full HD camera with dual 3G-SDI output and a genlock option available on the market, making it ideal for deployment in challenging locations. The camera is based on Sony’s IMX174 image sensor that provides exceptional image performance with multi matrix support. It features a global shutter and outstanding sensitivity. The camera fully supports HDR (HLG and PQ) and a range of colour spaces such as REC.709 and BT.2020.

“All ATOM cameras have a built-in Colour Control Unit with incredibly low latency and a broad range of functionality including multi-matrix colour correction, colour temperature settings and profiles, lens shading correction, flare compensation, white balance and much more,” said Stephane Ducobu, director of sales, broadcast products at Dream Chip. “That makes them incredibly versatile and flexible, and able to accommodate the preferences of the most discerning vision engineers.”

Other sporting deployments for CyanView have included the Le Mans 24H, where the Cy-RCP was used to control cameras – including the ATOM one – mounted on board 17 cars where it brought new levels of ease of use, flexibility and efficiency while adding to the excitement of the coverage. It has also been deployed at major international tennis tournaments, cycling competitions, and high profile sporting events across the US and Europe.