NEP Switzerland is producing all matches of the Raiffeisen Super League (RSL), Switzerland’s premier football league in UHD/HDR.
Since the start of the 2018/2019 season in July, NEP Switzerland has produced more than 20 matches in the HDR format as well as several Euro League games for Swiss broadcast channel Teleclub.
Two of the company’s OB vans used for the production were conceived and delivered by German-based system integrator Broadcast Solutions and upgraded with additional Grass Valley equipment to meet Teleclub’s demand for UHD/HDR production. With this setup, NEP Switzerland and Teleclub are believed to be the first and currently the only team that produces UHD/HDR football matches on a regular basis and as a daily business.
To advance NEP Switzerland’s OB vans UHD-41 and -42, both on duty producing the Raiffeisen Super League, the company upgraded all of their Grass Valley LDX 86N 4K cameras with perpetual HDR licenses. Within each OB Van 12x Densité 3+ XIP-3901 processing engines were deployed; consuming only 4RU, they offer up to 24x processing channels for up/down, and colour space conversion as well as mapping of the various UHD/HDR signals.
On the output side, the OB Vans deliver a UHD/HDR and an HD/SDR signal to be fed via fibre to the Teleclub studios. The HDR signal is delivered in UHD 3840×2160 /50p HDR in HLG format. For users viewing the matches in HD/SDR the signals are converted and mapped into HD/SDR 1080i.
In the course of the upgrade, NEP Switzerland also deployed several perpetual LDX Universe licences, which are enabling HiSpeed and XtremeSpeed functionality to their LDX 86N 4k camera systems. For monitoring purposes NEP Switzerland uses 4x TV- Logic LUM 240G, 3x Leader WFM LV 5333 as well as 1x Phabrix QX 12G monitors.
Thomas Weigold, sales manager DACH at Grass Valley comments “We are thrilled that NEP Switzerland started producing in UHD/HDR on a regular basis soon after only one successful HDR test production earlier this year. With the help of a comprehensive set of HDR tools and workflows provided by Grass Valley, and thanks to the unmatched expertise of more than 250 UHD productions since the launch of the two 4K OB Trucks, team NEP Switzerland will continue to be delivering outstanding UHD/HDR performance to their demanding clients.”
