Romania’s Dolce Sport Goes Live with Full Ross Virtual Solution

Dolce Sport is one of Romania’s leading terrestrial sports channels, broadcasting international sporting events, and breaking the latest sports news to an audience of 1.4 million since 2010. Following the move to a new purpose-built studio building and a brand refresh to celebrate the channel’s 4^th birthday, Dolce Sport has now partnered with Ross Video to help give the channel’s output a fresh new look. Ross Video has supplied a full turnkey virtual studio solution including Ross robotics, with the XPression graphics engine driving all virtual set, augmented reality, channel branding, and ticker elements.

The systems integration work was carried out by StudioTech, a Ross partner in Poland, and Dolce Sport are delighted with the results:

“We wanted to refresh the channel’s look and feel around the 4^th birthday but we also wanted to build in additional flexibility for the future”, notes Vlad Enachescu, General Manager. “ We were very impressed with the Ross solution from a technical perspective but we also really appreciated the company’s approach; it was clear they wanted to fully understand our future plans and develop a partnership with us. They were also happy to arrange visits to customer sites and let us to talk openly with their existing clients, which was refreshing. The Ross virtual solution allows us to design extremely creative studio sets which integrate seamlessly with our branding and graphics, keeping our content fresh and engaging.”

The flagship news show on Dolce Sport draws on all elements of the Ross virtual solution. “The system has enabled us to virtually extend our physical sets and augment the sets with animated virtual items”, comments Vlad Enachescu. “We can do incredible things with only small amounts of physical space and our audiences seem to be very impressed with the results. Making the move to a virtual solution was obviously a big step – repeatability and reliability were two key concerns for us – but we’ve been delighted with the process and with the choice of Ross as a partner.”

According to David Dowling, Ross Video’s Director of Sales for EMEA, the Dolce Sport deal reflects a growing trend in procurement in the region. “We’re seeing more and more broadcasters looking for the simplicity of working with a single manufacturer who can provide a turnkey solution. There are clear benefits to this approach and it’s no accident that Ross Video now has one of the widest and most complete ranges of products in the industry. We believe in making life easy for our customers and our recent successes in EMEA demonstrate that customers really appreciate our approach.”