STAMFORD, Conn.—NBC Sports Group has turned to Grass Valley IP-based production solutions to power workflows at its headquarters here, leveraging the open architecture, scalability and flexibility of IP technology.
Taking advantage of Grass Valley’s Dynamic IP Blueprint, NBC Sports quickly revamped its infrastructure. The cornerstone of the blueprint is Grass Valley’s Dynamic System Orchestrator GV Orbit, Grass Valley said.
GV Orbit combines configuration, control and monitoring designed to orchestrate broadcast media networks dynamically across SDI, hybrid and pure IP deployments, it said.
“With the return of live sports and major events, we need to ensure we have the best technology available capable of spinning up and down as sports events peak,” said Tim Canary, NBC Sports vice president of engineering.
“Part of NBC’s roadmap was to upgrade our routing topology at the Stamford site by 2023, and the relocation of our Golf Channel Headquarters last year accelerated that project,” he said. “We wanted to adopt a standards-based routing system that would enable us to evolve and add more functionality over time as needed.”
Grass Valley impressed NBC Sports with its latest IP innovations, which made selecting the vendor for the project “easy,” he added.
“The GV Orbit technology was built from the ground up for the demands of live production in an IP environment, and Grass Valley has been a true partner throughout this technology transformation," said Canary.
The switch to IP also entailed Grass Valley’s Dynamic Software Processing solutions, including the XIP-3901-UDC-IF dual-channel 4K UHD format converter, the Kaleido-IP multiviewer and Audio Live processor, all of which pair with GV Orbit, Grass Valley said.
When used in conjunction with the dynamic pathfinding and dynamic resource management capabilities of GV Orbit, new production agility is brought to bear, the company said.
“Grass Valley’s commitment to innovative, open-architecture has been a huge benefit for us,” said Lukas Zahas, NBC Sports manager of broadcast technology. “The Dynamic IP Blueprint empowers us to build, configure and change systems on-the-fly.”
