HELSINKI—The Finnish Ice Hockey Arenas project is a prestigious 4K-over-IP project for the streaming and broadcast of all Liiga (Finnish Elite League) professional ice hockey games by content rights holder Telia. Broadcast Solutions Finland, the Finnish subsidiary of system integrator Broadcast Solutions GmbH, worked with Studiotec, the Harman and Audinate distributor in Finland, to deliver a solution for broadcast services company Streamteam Nordic Oy.
The project incorporated three Harman brands showcasing the latest (beta) Dante firmware V4 that will be launched shortly across most Harman brands including Crown, BSS, Soundcraft and Studer. Being compatible with the new Audinate Dante Domain Manager software, Dante V4 firmware enables AoIP networks across different Ethernet Subnets and increased latency adjustment of up to 40ms—ideal for linking arenas as far north as Oulu to Helsinki.
The Helsinki-based broadcast TV production facility can broadcast live from seven different remote locations/arenas simultaneously, out of 14 potential sites. The seven OB trucks can connect to any of the 14 potential arenas at any particular time and able to start the transmission by just plugging to the IP WAN local connection box.
To achieve this, we use Audinate Dante AoIP technology to interconnect all the audio equipment as well as provide the long distance audio tie lines to the remote sites through 1GB Ethernet WAN connections provided by Telia. Both Audinate and tm stagetec systems, an Australian-based systems integrator, provided invaluable support in the network design phase.
The Studios in Helsinki will have eight transmission galleries, a virtual studio, and a 5.1 surround-capable audio control room equipped with a 42-fader Studer Vista V with redundant Infinity 1000 cores, four D23m frames for I/O, a combination of analog and digital audio, six Dante cards, and Genelec monitoring. The eight galleries and a separate mixing room for the virtual studio will be equipped with Soundcraft Si Performer consoles to mix talent with premixes provided from the Studer Vista V. Dante-enabled AEQ commentary units will be used in each arena and in four commentary rooms in Helsinki.
At each of the remote locations there will be a combination of three different BSS BLU I/O + GPIO boxes interconnected using Harman proprietary HQNet Ethernet protocol, providing microphones, analog and digital audio connectivity, camera tallies, as well as a local backup premix. Sennheiser wireless and wired microphones and IEM’s are used extensively throughout.
The system was designed to provide a new level of viewer listening experience, while maintaining the flexibility and robustness demanded of a system of this scale. Game on!
Toni Partti is a broadcast engineer for Broadcast Solutions Finland He can be reached att.partti@broadcast-solutions.fi.
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