Gearhouse Broadcast wins supplier deal for Asian Games

Sony, Thomson, EVS, and Snell & Wilcox gear will take to the field for Gearhouse Broadcast, the supplier of broadcast facilities for the production coverage of the 15th Asian Games. The games will be held during the first 15 days of December in Doha, Qatar.

Gearhouse Broadcast says planning for the project is well underway with numerous site and venue visits to Doha, meeting with the client DAGBS to ascertain their requirements and interpret their specifications.

And the gear, of course, has already been chosen. Gearhouse Broadcast will supply, install and operate eight complete production flyaway systems which will range from six camera to 10 camera and will be used for the production coverage of the host feed at the twelve stadiums where the various sporting contests will take place. The flyaway s come out of Gearhouse Broadcast s range of flyway products and systems at their UK offices.

Gearhouse Broadcast will supply a total of 65 operational crew members including engineers, audio engineers, communication engineers, vision controllers, and riggers (the Games are demanding logistically due to the events being held across 12 stadiums throughout Doha).

Provision of broadcast equipment for the Games involves supplying cameras for the field of play areas including 28 Sony HDC 1500s, 26 Sony BVP 950s, and high speed super-motion cameras using the Sony HDC 3300 and Thomson LDK23-HS and also three Panasonic AWE 800 SDI cameras.

Eamonn Dowdall, Managing Director at Gearhouse Broadcast said, the cameras chosen offer the latest technology available and they will provide the host broadcaster with picture quality of the highest standard.

The Replay rooms will contain 25 EVS XTs. And the 12 production control rooms at each stadium venue will be fitted out with nine production galleries each of which will be installed using 67 LCD Vutrix Series of 23 HD/SD screens. A range of nine vision desks will be supplied from the Sony DVS 7350 to the new MFS 2000, Snell and Wilcox s Kahuna, Thomson s DD Series. Controlled via the desks are replay transition devices which will be used to give the mix effect between slo-mo replays and live production.

The Master Control Areas for engineering and quality control will comprise of test and measurement equipment from Tektronix utilising the WFM 700 and the 601E series. Routers selected will be the Pro-bel series and the Pro-bel Aurora series HD/SD routing systems. Leitch equipment has been selected for the distribution and glue products. Evertz has been selected for the system sync generation equipment and fibre equipment used.

The Audio Control Room will comprise of audio desks from Soundcraft Series 5 56-channel, Soundcraft B800 48-channel console, DDA CS-8 32 channel audio console, and Midas Venice 240 24-channel consoles. Audio monitoring and quality control will be carried out on Bel series monitoring equipment.

A variety of microphones have also been selected to cover the sporting contests being played which comprise of 24 Sennheiser MKH- 816, ninety Sennheiser MKH 416, 11 Audio Technica AT 835 ST stereo microphones and various smaller microphones.

The communications systems provided will be the Clearcom Compact 72 series and new Riedel communications systems. All of the associated broadcast cabling at each of the twelve venues will be supplied and installed by Gearhouse Broadcast. And all of the cabling used will be Belden broadcast series cable, including audio multi ways, triax video and data cabling.

We have been working with both HBS and TWI for many years on various international sporting events including the last two world cups and the Commonwealth Games,” says Dowdall. “We have a very good working relationship with these clients and pride ourselves in the consistent provision of high standard broadcast solutions and facilities.”