NEP Switzerland has aided a new Swiss sports channel, MySports, in broadcasting live coverage of all ice hockey matches in the Swiss National League, along with matches from the Russian KHL and the Swedish Hockey League.
Based between two sites in Zurich and Rossens, the new channel also carries Bundesliga football, handball, basketball, winter sports and large eSports events broadcasts.
Working with German system integrator Broadcast Solutions, NEP Switzerland set up a 1,000sqm 4K/UHD studio complex that includes a playout centre in Zurich. It runs 20 live channels, including four 24/7 channels and two 4K/UHD channels.
The Rossens studio, meanwhile, produces all French MySports programming in cooperation with the Zurich site.
For the MySports production, 40 HD-SDI and four UHD streams are sent between Zurich and Rossens via a multicast network. The storage in both studios is constantly synchronised across both locations. Each studio has its own EVS servers, located in Erlenbach, which are synchronized via a central storage unit. For audio signal transport, both sites are linked by a Ravenna/AES67 audio network.
For the studio and playout installation, NEP Switzerland chose 4K cameras, vision mixers, routers, multiviewers and playout solutions from Grass Valley. In the Playout Center, this includes Grass Valley’s iTX integrated playout platform, while for video between the sites there are Grass Valley Densité IP-Gateways.
For audio production in the studios and transporting audio between the sites, MySports uses an IP-based Ravenna/AES67 audio network with Lawo audio cores, Lawo mixing consoles and Lawo LCUs. Overall video and audio signal routing is controlled by a Virtual Studio Manager (VSM) system.
