Boxx supplies wireless camera system for Olympics coverage
Feb 26, 2010 2:22 PM
Boxx TV’s Meridian system uses MIMO antenna technology to handle numerous channels in the 5.1GHz-5.8GHz spectrum.
The Meridian HD digital wireless system from Boxx TV is capturing all of the Winter Olympics ice hockey action from General Motors Place, home of the Vancouver Canucks (renamed Canada Hockey Place for the Olympics). Several of the systems are being used on-site to provide live-to-air uncompressed HD signals in real time from untethered cameras located at multiple points throughout the arena.
The zero-delay system transmits images from the arena floor as well as pictures from the locker rooms hundreds of feet away. Its multireceiver system enables directors to pick shots virtually from anywhere in the facility, even through multiple concrete walls and similar obstructions.
With the typical operational range of a football stadium, Boxx uses MIMO antenna technology to handle numerous channels in the 5.1GHz-5.8GHz spectrum, enabling single cameras to shoot from multiple positions and multiple cameras to be deployed throughout an arena or similar facility. No frequency licenses are needed.
The system was installed at General Motors Place by Sony Systems Integration Group, which also served as the systems integrator to upgrade and relocate the facility’s control room and video capabilities.
Multiple receivers were placed at key spots in the arena, including the player bench on the arena floor and in the player change room, gym and the press center, allowing wireless pictures in uncompressed HD to be integrated into any event. In addition, Sony cameras using a wireless, remote camera control system were able to communicate directly to a Sony remote-control panel, another unique Boxx feature that allows original manufacturers’ remote-control panels to be used with its system.
Boxx technology also offers a daisy-chain signal system feature that is similar in concept to the way that cell phone systems pass conversations transparently from cell to cell while a person is moving. In Vancouver, the Boxx signal technology is passing uncompressed HD signals through a series of receivers along long pathways: a hallway, a field, etc. An untethered camera can follow a player from the arena, through long hallways into a locker room, shooting continuously in HD, with no trailing cables.
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
