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| News Stories and Events July |
| Royal
Navy Gets New Colour Plymouth Hoe provided a spectacular backdrop when Her Majesty The Queen presented a new Colour to the Royal Navy during a ceremony on board HMS Ocean in Plymouth Sound. A Gigawave digital link was used to relay the signals from HMS Ocean.
Broadcast RF supplied the MTV-D digital 'backpack' transmitter used on HMS Ocean and the MVL-D used to receive the signals on shore, as well as peripheral equipment. The 'unilateral' feed was supplied to BBC TV and ITV in addition to international news services. Using a digital ship to shore link avoided the risk of multipath
and chroma flutter, which often manifest themselves when analogue
links are used over water. |
Earlier this year, Dorna awarded Gigawave a contract to supply 30
on-board transmitters and data links for their coverage of the MotoGP
World Championship. As part of the contract, Gigawave supplied four
pre-production transmitters, which have been exhaustively tested on
bikes competing in the FIM 250cc World Championship. A further two
transmitters with pre-production datalinks were tested during the French
Grand Prix, at Le Mans. An in-depth article about Dorna and their coverage of MotoGP will
be published on this website later this season. |
| DutchView
COFDM ‘Rebro’ Test Goes Live Mobile Broadcast Systems, the specialist division of DutchView, carried out a full-scale operational test of a Gigawave digital ‘Rebro’ system during their coverage of the Dutch National Cycling Championship, in Rotterdam, at the end of June. DutchView specialises in the live coverage of cycle races and marathons, throughout Europe.
Signals from the ‘Digital Moto’ were beamed up to one of the two mid-point relay helicopters that were being used to cover the race. In the helicopter, the uplink signal was automatically retransmitted, without incurring additional delay, using a Gigawave digital rebroadcast (Rebro) system to the ground receive point. Here, a standard ‘two-box’ MVL-D provided DutchView vision engineers with a SDI signal, direct into the OB Truck. The Mobile Broadcast Systems team was delighted with the
results, especially as the digital link was not subject
to picture break up and chroma flutter, as with the analogue
links, in difficult parts of the course. Despite this only
being an engineering
test,
the Director insisted in using the images from the ‘Digital
Moto’ for much of the race, in preference to those
from the analogue ‘Motos’. “In QPSK mode, the signal was extremely rugged
and in many instances performed better than our analogue
links, especially when the 19 lap race crossed over a
steel girder bridge. Having switched the modulator to
64 QAM mode there was a significant improvement in quality,
although this was offset with by a less ‘rugged’ RF
signal.
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| A
New Angle for FIA GT Races The latest round of the LG Superacing Weekend was at Donington Park. Alfacam covered the three-hour FIA GT race and two heats of the Eropean Trouring Car Championship tor Eurosport using two D-Cam's in the Pit-lane and Gigawave links out on the track.
Up to now the on-board cameras have been used to give viewers the driver's POV, but this time, in Alfacam engineers installed a camera in the headlight of one car and a second camera in the rear light of another car, for the European Touring Car races,
Apart from experimenting with new POV camera angles Alfacam engineers also track tested a MTV-D transmitter, the digital version of the analogue 'Mini' transmitter. Alfacam own a fleet of six digital, High Definition OB Trucks and obviously would like to operate in an 'end to end' SDI environment Alfacam have been delighted with the way that their two D-Cams and the on-board camera links have performed throughout the season. The two D-Cam wireless camera systems are used to cover the action on the grid prior to the race, action in the Pit-lane during the race, and interviews after the race
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