Torino football club Juventus has a spectacular new stadium, opened for the beginning of the current season. It includes a comprehensive video distribution system, using DVB and IPTV for television distribution and video on demand, designed and implemented by Televes.
Off air and off satellite signals are routed to the telecommunications centre of the stadium. Feeds from the permanent cameras around the stadium, and from outside broadcast trucks, are also routed to the same location, where a Televes modular headend creates a digital multiplex.
An 18 channel digital television service is provided to 400 television screens around the stadium, most notably to the individual screens in the 120 VIP boxes, as well as to restaurants, bars and public areas. The full service, including other feeds and a video on demand server, go to Televes IPTV headend and middleware server to implement interactive services and give fast on-demand access to archive content.
The IPTV service is currently available at 73 locations, including the players’ and officials’ changing rooms, the Partners’ Club, and the suites and private boxes, each of which is equipped with an IPTV set-top box. The plan is to add another 40 private boxes to the stadium in the near future.
The data architecture to support this service, which relies on fibre for capacity and to cover the long distances around the stadium, was implemented using equipment from Arantia, a subsidiary of Televes which specialises in IPTV and interactive digital television solutions.
