In Broadcast - February 2013 - 68


I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 16 - FEBRUARY 2013

N E W S

InSTUDIO

SIS Upload HQ To Blue Tower Suites
SIS develops Blue Tower ofﬁce space and studio facilities at MediaCityUK…

A

68

fter 25 years of operating from
its London Corsham Street
base the relocation of SIS’ facilities
to MediaCityUK in Salford was a
major project for the company.
In addition to the new corporate
offices on the tenth floor SIS required
new broadcast and engineering
facilities, which comprise the
eighth and nineth floors of the Blue
Tower which were entirely designed,
installed and commissioned by the
SIS LIVE project team.
SIS Director of Production Jason
Barker was the overall project
director, Jenkins Design and ISG
were commissioned to complete
the building works, with Fairbrother
handling the installation of electrical
and air conditioning systems.
The brief presented to the SIS
LIVE team was for the installation of
multiple production areas (galleries,
studios, voiceover booths, edit
suites) and an MCR, plus supporting
core infrastructure (router, comms
system and “glue” products) for
parent company SIS.
This project involved the
design, installation, testing and
commissioning of state-of-the-art
production facilities, which were
planned to replace SIS’ resources in
London. The opportunity was taken
to upgrade the facilities, including
the installation of 3G-capable
infrastructure with HD-ready abilities
and inter-area fibre was installed to
enable rapid deployment, reduce
wiring times and to provide a degree
of future proofing.
Rather than a more traditional
large core router and large
multiviewer system, the design
utilises a Miranda NVision hybrid
broadcast router and a monitoring
router coupled with smaller modular
Miranda multiviewers. The benefit of
this approach is the ability for the
monitoring router, coupled with the
Optocore gigabit network on the
fibre ring, to provide resilience to the
main hybrid routing and MADI audio
systems. Other headline equipment
includes; Miranda processing, Snell

The ofﬁce reception area

SIS LIVE’s Blue Tower operations control room

vision mixers, Calrec digital audio
mixers, Clearcom communications,
EVS servers, Ericsson encoding and
Cisco multiplexing.
The 24hr MCR was designed to
monitor and control the new SIS
national media network as well as
the new SIS teleport at MediaCityUK,
the largest of its kind in the north of
England, comprising nine transmitcapable antennas ranging from
3.8m to 9m. Each of the four fullyequipped MCR operational “pods”
can be staffed by either one or two
people and the main monitor wall is
driven from a 576 x 1152 monitoring
router with 192 sources viewable at
any one time.
Building a broadcast facility
halfway up a shared tower block
presented its own unique challenges
– not least getting over 120 racks
up to the eighth floor in only one
operational lift. Not only was this
arduous but also doorways had to be
altered slightly in order for the racks
to be moved through the building on

SIS LIVE production monitoring wall

a bespoke designed dolly.
The engineering project team, led
by SIS LIVE staff and augmented
by key freelance engineers,
produced the concept and designs,
managed the project and oversaw
the testing and commissioning of
the broadcast systems. Strong
project management resulted in
a successful delivery on-time and
under-budget.
These resources in the Blue
Tower are undergoing continual
development, with new clients
embedding their production
operations within the SIS facilities.
In December last year, SIS
signed an exclusive agreement to
distribute all three of Betfred’s shop
TV channels. Betfred is the world’s
biggest owner-operator bookmaker
with a retail estate of more than
1,350 shops. SIS’ state-of-the-art
MediaCityUK facility will become
home for Betfred TV with the SIS
LIVE projects team designing,
commissioning, and building their

SIS LIVE sound booth

full production suite comprising;
a two-tier production gallery, dual
sound gallery/voice-over booths and
a four camera studio.
This development at MediaCityUK
is a fine example of the systems
integration and project skills within
SIS LIVE and the facilities installed
there are just the beginning and
present the company with a fantastic
opportunity to expand its business
in the years ahead.

A state-of-the-art work space

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