In Broadcast - November 2013 - 26

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

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 25 - NOVEMBER 2013

N E W S

InFORM

Hole-In-One For RTS And OMNEO
T

26

he 2013 venue for oldest golf
tournament in the world, the
British Open, was the idyllic
Muirﬁeld links overlooking the Firth
of Forth in East Lothian, Scotland.
The world's largest sportsonly channel, ESPN, provided
coverage of the event, enlisting for
the purpose the aid of IMG and
CTV Outside Broadcasts, a British
company that has been active
now for over three decades in the
broadcasting industry and numbers
the BAFTA ﬁlm awards as well as
a variety of NFL, cricketing and
golﬁng events among its references.
For this year's Open, CTV
employed around ten OB vehicles
- and, for the ﬁrst time, OMNEO
network technology.
"I have worked on a large number
of major productions," says
Hamish Greig, CTV's Director of
Engineering," but this was one of
the most complex. We deployed, for
example, 42 line and HD cameras,
four remote heads on camera
cranes and a flying camera.
"We were extremely impressed by
the RTS+OMNEO combination. It
provides a networking technology
ideal for events like the Open
Championship, offering as it does
not only programme transport but
also system control at the same
time, and it gave us the further
advantage of being able to operate
the keypanels in a remote session."
Thanks to the OMNEO-capable
RTS equipment, Greig and his

They took to the links: an RTS ADAM
full-size modular matrix intercom

Mission control: CTV Outside Broadcasts together with IMG provided ESPN's
coverage from Muirﬁeld of this year's British Open

team had no difﬁculty in assuring
communications between the
diverse and numerous group
of individuals involved in the
massive project.
The nerve centre of the
CTV Outside Broadcasts
communications system at
Muirﬁeld was an ADAM full-sized
modular matrix intercom in a 128
configuration.
Located in OB9, this matrix
with a capacity of up to 464 ports
is the ﬂagship of the RTS matrix
range. Equipped with redundant
power supplies and controllers, the
integrated MCII-e controller allows

the simultaneous operation of up
to 32 parallel AZEdit clients via
Ethernet and/or RS-485.
The keypanels from RTS were
linked using OMNEO network
technology. They included
representatives of the KP-32-CLD,
KP-32 and KP-12-CLD series. The
communication between the matrix
and the keypanels was implemented
using an RTS OMI card in the ADAM
matrix as well as six RTS OKI cards
in the keypanels.
The use of OMNEO offered
numerous advantages over a
conventional network: a lower
cabling outlay, automatic allocation

of IP addresses and the daisychaining of the Ethernet signal from
keypanel to keypanel.
The integration of an additional
ADAM matrix via a TBX card
allowed the creation of a uniﬁed
but elaborate system with many
and varied technical options. RVON
connections, furthermore, assured
the link with ESPN headquarters in
Bristol (Connecticut, USA), which
considerably facilitated the logistics,
as well as enhancing the overall
quality, of the production.
Two Cronus matrices on board
OB1 were also integrated into the
ADAM network using an analogue
connection. Cronus is a modular,
32-port, digital matrix intercom only
two rack units in height but capable
of accommodating up to four AIO
analogue or RVON-C VoIP cards
with eight ports each.
"The added flexibility and
conﬁguration options that OMNEO
contributed were of decisive
importance during this event,"
says Greig. "Take for example
the keypanels: thanks to OMNEO,
we were able to connect up to 20
keypanels in series.
"We were able to integrate each
of them using fibre optics and
Ethernet - via RJ45 connections -
into the system. It worked perfectly
and brought huge gains over
previous years. The combination
of equipment from RTS and OMNEO
facilitated to an enormous extent
the communications logistics."
OMNEO is a network technology
for the transmission of audio
and control data via a standard
Ethernet connection.
With OMNEO up to 10,000
devices can be integrated into a
media network. OMNEO is based
on two software components.
The Dante network technology
developed by Audinate is
responsible for the transmission
of the audio signals.

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