Chris Smeeton, director at Argosy, talks to TVBEurope about the company’s role in bringing the global festival of football to the screen.
What is your company’s role?
We are supporting a number of sports broadcasters in Qatar and have supplied a range of infrastructure products, including cables, racking, fibre-optic assemblies, patch panels, mains distribution units and network and KVM switches.
For live football match production, we have supplied installation material and camera cables to Omni Group for the Khalifa Stadium as well as for Lusail Stadium where the FIFA World Cup final will take place.
In particular, 4K signal integrity is an important requirement, along with SMPTE connectors, which we supply with ‘pigtails’ to make on-site termination and minor repair jobs easier and more secure. Our SMPTE Cleaners provide instant cleaning of fibre connectors on the go, which will greatly assist maintenance during and after live football matches.
What technology are you deploying on the project?
In Qatar, our main customer buys Equipment Racks, Mains Distribution Units and Video Cable and Connectors. For the World Cup, we have already supplied equipment racks and mains distribution units to television facilities, along with video cables and connectors. We’ve also deployed our solutions for use in a number of OB trucks that will be located at various football stadiums across the country.
Is any of it new?
Our new Hyperflex SMPTE camera cable assemblies for HD and ultra HD signals, along with and further installation materials, supplied through Primecast Technical Solutions, are being utilised by beIN Sports as part of their studio upgrade project to accommodate production of this international football event. The Hyperflex cable is designed to be resilient to heavy treatment, whether being pulled long distances on outside broadcasts or subject to constant flexing, bending and crushing on studio floors.
What are the stand-out USPs of your company’s role in terms of sustainability, cloud usage, remote production?
Our portfolio of intelligent power management solutions help ensure that broadcasters and facilities managers can fully monitor and manage their systems at all times and be more power-efficient. We are also developing a new technology to help channel air-flow more effectively through our equipment racks, ensuring that equipment cools more efficiently, which in turn saves power.
As an organisation, we are very concerned with sustainability and have moved most of our packaging over to recyclable materials. We also ship orders via sea freight as often as we can.
