NEP UK and Grass Valley support new Wimbledon tennis host broadcast

NEP UK supported the first UHD HDR live production of the 2018 Wimbledon Tennis Championship with IP infrastructure from Grass Valley.

NEP’s latest SMPTE ST 2110 trucks, Venus and Ceres, were deployed to support the newly formed host broadcaster, Wimbledon Broadcast Services (WBS).

WBS provided multi-camera coverage of all 18 courts for the first time, including a net-cam on both Center Court and No.1 Court, as well as other enhancements throughout the tournament. Venus and Ceres managed HD, HDR and UHD content, providing world feeds to 20 onsite broadcasters and supporting 21 of its own production galleries.

The two trucks, linked via a portable IP flyaway system, formed the world’s largest SMPTE ST 2110 OB installation and were able to handle over 118 camera signals, which would have normally involved miles of cabling. However, thanks to the Grass Valley IP infrastructure, this was vastly reduced.

Grass Valley IP infrastructure is built around its IQ UCP 25GbE Gateway cards. IQ UCP provides a modular, re-programmable, processing platform for two-way interfacing between the IP equipment and existing baseband technology to support clients using Serial Digital Interface (SDI) feeds. This provides added flexibility, enabling NEP to easily adapt the system for different events without the need to replace or re-wire racks of equipment. Each truck has around 70 Grass Valley IQ UCP cards and the flyaways have a total of 200.

The trucks also house Grass Valley’s IPEDGE-SVR turnkey IP routing control system with Orbit control and monitoring software, Grass Valley Kayenne and Kahuna vision mixers along with IP Multiviewers. These seamlessly integrate with Arista COTS network switches, AXON Digital Design master control systems, Calrec audio mixing capability and comms facilities from TELEX Communications.