TAG Video Systems will be supporting FOX Sports broadcast a major tournament that is taking place in Qatar this month. TAG’s IP software platform is selected to be installed in all FOX Sports’ control rooms and operations multiviewers, monitoring the integrity of over 1,200 sources driving more than 150 displays for the event.
Moreover, TAG’s monitoring and visualisation platform will form an integral part of the live production system. Built as two separate and redundant systems, FOX Sports’ joint event system is dubbed the “world’s largest” transportable SMPTE ST 2110 live production flypack, able to be quickly flown and set up between major events.
Kevin Callahan, Vice-President, Field Operations & Engineering, FOX Sports, said: “The key is the monitoring, being able to see everything coming in and going out and being able to QC it – that’s really the goal of the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) as a central hub. It connects to the studio location, venues, our Los Angeles broadcast facility, as well as our Tempe broadcast facility.”
The TAG multiviewer and monitoring platform enables FOX Sports operators to monitor all signals in the ST 2110 IP workflow as well as JPEG-XS and 4K/Ultra HD (UHD), the formats FOX Sports are using for transmission between the IBC and studio, venues and FOX Sports operation centres in Tempe and Los Angeles. The entire network will also be managed by a remote IT team during the month-long tournament.
Peter Wharton, CSO at TAG, added: “Since this system was built, we’ve launched numerous new features including our Bridge Technology that removes the complexity of routing the same stream to multiple locations with an ultra-efficient architecture.
“With a pure software solution on commodity hardware, TAG enables FOX to change and add to the system as their business needs evolve while saving capacity, resources and costs in the future, all without changing hardware.”