TV 2 and Telenor build sports production ecosystem with Nevion
Innovative media solution linking venues and production companies over IP allows delivery of ‘infrastructure as a service’.
- Broadcaster TV 2 wished to deliver highest quality of television sports coverage to audiences
- VideoIPath media orchestration and SDN control platform
- eMerge SDN media fabric switches
- Sports venues and production companies can participate seamlessly in TV 2’s remote production workflows
Our objective is to create the most compelling sports content for our audience.
Svein Henning Skaga, Solutions Architect, TV 2
Transforming sports production workflow
Nevion – a Sony Group Company and award-winning provider of virtualised media production solutions – has helped Norwegian broadcaster TV 2 and telecom service provider Telenor build a ground-breaking sport production ecosystem. Making extensive use of Nevion solutions, products and services, the solution allows sports venues and production companies to participate seamlessly in TV 2’s production workflows.
TV 2 owns the television rights to multiple domestic sports leagues in Norway, including men’s and women’s football, handball and ice hockey. The broadcaster’s objective is to deliver the highest possible live coverage of the games to its audience. With over 60 venues and multiple simultaneous games involved, TV 2 contracts several production companies to produce content. Production takes place remotely, with TV 2 producing the final programme to be aired – effectively representing a distributed production model with centralized production hubs. TV 2 can also produce other events directly, either from the venues themselves or from other locations.
Linking venues, production and broadcast resources
Telenor – together with Nevion and TV 2 – is now providing the remote production solution linking venues, production companies and the broadcaster itself. This involves the encoding of uncompressed SDI and SMPTE ST 2110-20 signals as JPEG XS (SMPTE ST 2110-22), with Nevion’s 25G/100G eMerge media fabric products used as access switches and providing aggregation.
Media flows between locations are orchestrated with Nevion’s VideoIPath. Using the multi-tenanting feature of VideoIPath, Telenor enables production companies to control the flows involved in their own productions – effectively offering orchestration as a service to them. Some production companies are also using VideoIPath’s new broadcast control functionality to manage the connectivity.
VideoIpath is also federated with TV 2’s existing VideoIPath system, which already orchestrates media flows within and between the broadcaster’s SMPTE ST 2110 production facilities. This allows end-to-end media flows to be controlled easily by TV 2, without compromising the performance, resilience and security of their own system.
Maximising production values
A full range of professional and support services also provided by Nevion with the project includes consultancy, infrastructure design, device configuration, device integration, setup of the orchestration system, testing and troubleshooting.
“Our objective is to create the most compelling sports content for our audience, and that means using the highest production values for all leagues, both elite and lower tier” notes Svein Henning Skaga, Solutions Architect at TV 2. “This would normally be a logistical and financial challenge, but the new production ecosystem allows us to overcome this.”
Delivering technology and business innovation
“From a telecom service provider point of view, creating this new infrastructure and delivering it as a service presents an outstanding new business opportunity” confirms Torbjørn Hulbak, Chief Marketing Officer responsible for the Business segment at Telenor Norway. “It leverages our strengths to provide real additional value to an important customer of ours.”
“This project is highly innovative from both a business and technical standpoint, and we’ve been excited to be part of it” adds Thomas Heinzer, CEO at Nevion. “We are obviously pleased our flagship products and their latest features are being used. We are also very happy about the collaboration between TV 2, Telenor and Nevion to make this production ecosystem a reality.”
