IP adoption gathers momentum

For many people, the most iconic IP project in the world is Australia’s Andrews Production Hub. Based in Sydney and Melbourne, the Hubs have been producing live broadcasts of Aussie rules football, rugby, tennis and cricket for Fox Sports Australia since March direct from cities that are thousands of miles apart.

A remote and centralised production on this scale is delivering immediate logistical savings on freelance crews to the broadcaster. More significantly it is using SMPTE ST 2110 for the IP transport of the video and audio signals.

“This project basically redefines sports broadcast production for a whole continent,” says Andreas Hilmer, Director Marketing and Communications, Lawo, which with Sony, EVS and Ross was one of several vendors that worked with NEP Australia on delivery. “It’s seen as the blueprint for building a distributed infrastructure that makes use of IP networking in combination with the data centre principles.”

The -10, -20, -30 and -21 portions of the SMPTE ST 2110 suite cover the…