UTV invest £2 million in OB unit

UTV have just completed the design and build of a new outside broadcast unit, an investment in excess of £2 million.

Robert McCourt, Group Director of Engineering, UTV, said: "The £2 million required to complete the building of the vehicle represented a considerable investment by UTV. We managed the design ourselves to ensure it met our demanding production requirements and those of our clients, as well as providing maximum flexibility to meet future needs.

"We have already put it to the test by using it to broadcast two live entertainment programmes and a complete series of our choral competition, and we have been absolutely delighted with the results. Later this month it will be used to broadcast spectacular action from this year's International North-West 200."

The new OB unit has been fully equipped with the latest top of the range equipment and is built on a Mercedes Atego chassis with an overall length of 12 metres.

In addition, UTV have purchased a new mobile generator containing two 150kVA generators operating in parallel to provide maximum redundancy for live transmissions.

The vision system is centred around a Thompson Venus 128 x 128 router. Maximum flexibility is achieved by feeding all monitors, VTRs, Tee Lines and camera returns directly from the router. The vision mixer is a Thompson XtenDD-35 with 36 inputs, three M/Es, four RAMcorders and three channels of DVE. Under Monitor Displays and mnemonics on the vision mixer facilitate rapid reconfiguration of the system.

The unit is 12 camera capable and is equipped with five VTRs and a six channel EVS LMS disk recorder. Graphics are provided by fully loaded Aston Red and Aston Green caption generators.

Audio facilities are built around a Calrec S2 series 48-channel console.

(GB)