EVS Supplies Ekstraklasa Live Park With Management Workflows for Polish Football League Action

Ekstraklasa Live Park — the top Polish football league’s official broadcaster — will integrate a brand-new replay and content management workflow from EVS, the leading provider of live production solutions. The technology will be integrated into the broadcast service provider’s new UHD-4K, HDR-ready outside broadcast truck to produce higher-resolution live programming of the Polish league’s matches.

The unit will be integrated by Broadcast Solutions, Europe’s biggest OB van manufacturer and fitted with four new XT-VIA live production servers. To support the servers’ operation, the OB facility will also feature an IPDirector live PAM system, an LSM Connect, and XFile3. The elements of the EVS workflow will be provided by EVS’ Polish partner, twenty4seven.

“The need for higher-resolution is growing because viewers want to receive the best-quality programming possible,” says Live Park’s COO Marcin Serafin. “With that in mind, it’s important that the technology inside the truck is as reliable as possible. Having used EVS servers extensively in the past, we knew that they’d deliver the fastest replay workflow, even when operating in higher UHD-4K resolution.”

Introduced earlier this year, the XT-VIA is the next-generation of live production server. It allows users to operate in multiple screen resolutions, using a 12G SDI or IP-connected production environment. Installing the server into Live Park’s new outside broadcast truck means the broadcast service provider can boost its capacity to produce live football coverage in UHD-4K resolution with a higher dynamic range (HDR). Not only that, Live Park can also easily undergo the transition to an IP-connected workflow, when needed.

“The flexibility that XT-VIA provides is one of the most important aspects of the server,” says Szymon Wramba, CTO at Live Park. “It provides us with the ability to use baseband now and easily move to IP-connected operations when we need to. This opens up opportunities for us to operate more effectively through the likes of better-connected remote workflows.”

This benefit of the XT-VIA will be demonstrated during IBC2018. Ahead of its rollout for the Ekstraklasa, the truck will be presented at the show on Broadcast Solutions’ stand (E02) in the Outdoor Exhibits area. XT-VIA servers installed into the truck will be integrated with an EVS Connected Agent to demonstrate a multisite collaborative workflow enabled by C-Next. Visitors to the EVS stand (8.B90) will be able to browse live content on the servers using EVS’ web-based Xplore tool.

“To provide our customers with future-proof production solutions that are flexible, reliable, and that fulfill current as well as future technological demands is part of our DNA,” concludes Rainer Kampe, CTO at Broadcast Solutions. “Implementing the latest technology to enable for collaborative or IP-connected workflows, deployed in remote or multisite production environments is the key to fulfill this goal and EVS plays an essential role in this strategy.”

Ekstraklasa Live Park’s new OB facility will be ready from the beginning of 2019 when it will be ready to begin the production of Ekstraklasa matches in UHD-4K quality. The OB truck will be in place on stand E02 at IBC2018 between 14-18 September at the RAI Amsterdam.