Grass Valley adds to 3G TX system
The first elements of Grass Valley’s new 3G Transmission system were unveiled at NAB earlier this year, and unsurprisingly the company expanded on it all at IBC.
Here’s the statement…
Key to the transformation is the 3G Twin Base Station, which supports both 3G Triax and single-mode (dark) fiber connections. If the operator needs to use triax connectivity, the camera cables plug directly into the base station and the full functionality of 3G Triax is unleashed.
If a 3G Triax job requires the use of fiber because of extremely long cable-runs or pre-wired venues, the operators run dark fiber out to a field converter (LDK 4426), which takes the fibers and local power, and outputs true unlimited 3G Triax. This means that the camera can still be about a mile away from this box, without losing any functionality.
The field converter can be close to the truck, or up to 5 km (3.1 miles) away. If a 3G Fiber camera-back is used, the LDK 4425 3G Fiber Power Converter, does the same trick by adding power to the dark fibers of the 3G Twin base station, providing true unlimited 3G Fiber for the remainder of the path towards the camera. For shorter lengths of hybrid 3G Fiber, a simple patch panel on the tailboard can bring together the dark fibers and the power from the 3G Triax output of the 3G Twin base station, without the need for a field converter.
“The message from our customers in outside broadcast was clear: they could not afford to have equipment sitting on shelves, trucks in the workshop for refitting, or overnight shipments to overcome a cabling issue in the field” said Marcel Koutstaal, Senior Vice President for the Cameras Division of Grass Valley. “They told us that having to base their operations on the type of cable they could support was a major problem.
By combining the characteristics of fiber and triax with 3G Transmission, for the first time a triax truck can cover long-distance events such as golf or skiing, using simple dark fibers to the converter and triax from that point to the cameras, which can still be up to 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) away from theLDK 4426. Full camera control and diagnostics – including diagnostics of the field converters – is carried over whatever cables are used, as are top quality images at any video resolution up to 1080p50/60. The Grass Valley RefleX SuperXpander long lens adaptor is compatible with the system as it draws its power from the camera through a hot shoe connection, and works identically whether the camera is on 3G Fiber, 3G Triax, or a mixture of the two.
“With our new 3G Transmission system we have simply eliminated the practical problems that every player in our industry is familiar with,” added Koutstaal. “Triax or fiber: now there are no more limitations and no more differences. We know that this is set to be a revolution in outside broadcast operations, because the leading companies in the world have told us so.”