THE CHALLENGE
May 2022. Since 1956, broadcasts of the Summer and Winter Olympic Games, traditionally produced by Seven Sport, have been televised on the Seven Network in Australia, with millions of people tuning in. Now, they can stream every sport on demand and watch the highlights via bite-sized minis. This year marked a new era of remote broadcast experience, with Seven Network working with Australia’s Creative Technology team, part of the NEP Live Events, to create a virtual production environment with a top-end LED wall powered by Brompton Technology Tessera processing.
OUR SOLUTIONS
CT provided the backdrops for Seven Network’s sports hostings during the pandemic when travelling to venues wasn’t possible. As a result of this positive experience, we built a template with the client which they were subsequently able to use on the Tokyo and Beijing host broadcasts.
For this project, Seven Network wanted the highest resolution LED panels available to provide the ultimate background for the broadcast. This resulted in a high pixel density, so we used two 4K outputs from a media server into two Brompton Tessera SX40 processors to manage it.
Unilumin 1.8mm LED panels with an overall screen size of 19.5m by 2.5m (a whopping 10,560 by 1,350 pixels) were curved around a 5m radius. The team deployed four Tessera SX40 processors with active failover backup, as well as eight Tessera XD 10G data distribution units, including four main and four backup units.
Tessera processing is very robust, and the redundancy system works very well indeed. The panels were run in Studio Mode which reduced panel brightness while still maintaining the PWM (pulse-width modulation) bit depth, which is essential for television. Using the processor failover gives the team and the client great peace of mind and ensured the workflow was smooth and stress-free.
The outcome and feedback were all very positive indeed. All high-quality images and videos looked great on the broadcast and the presenters were able to be very close to the screen without causing any moiré effect. Following the success of this project, Seven Network plans to utilise the entire system for other televised broadcasts during 2022. This speaks volumes about the high-quality products CT utilise, as well as the world class-service we provide.
