1st October 2011
We talked many times of Infront in these pages, the Italian organization dealing with sports media rights, gathering and distributing tv contents and part of the international group of Infront Sports and Media AG, world renowned in sports marketing. Their competence span from motor bikes races to athletics, winter sports, basket, soccer, Formula 1, and many more. In Italy their story begins in 2006 with acquisition of former Media Partners, a standpoint in sports marketing, and a general widening of international activities. Today's landscape is characterized by selling sports rights, producing broadcast, IT and Telco contents involving around one thousand sports events.
In 2008 Infront was elected as official international sports rights distributor from Italian “Lega Calcio Professionisti” assisting them in offering and marketing centralized sports rights, following the latest Decreto Legislativo (Italian law) starting from season 2010/2011. In other words, resources and competence are the two pivots of a further extension of activities developed withing television studios made up in Milan, via Deruta 20. From former Al Jazeera and Milan channel productions -which still remain- the adventure is pushing further forward embracing many other tv productions like programs for La7 and tohers originated in a 1000mq studio and a couple of others, respectively of 1200 and 600 mq. In the previous years, Tv programs were recorded from an OB-Van placed nearby, but in the end the decision to plan new investments was taken. A new plan for a very modern production system involved the creation of highly technological and flexible features capable of expanding again when needed.
The new tv control room and shooting studio was created together with Professional Show, Italian appreciated system integrator.
The new system layout, created in only two months, was firstly cabled completely using equipments mockup inside the integrator labs al Limena. So all cabling was ready and tested even before the arrival of proper equipments! Once the final equipments arrived everything was cabled and tested on the spot in the labs, just before final installation. So this process made everything particularly smooth and quick in the final destination, Infront new studio.
The main idea behind the new studio was to get a better quality and a higher control on the production process not being obliged to rely on external services. Among the equipment chosen, Glue & Terminal gears by Evertz , with a Xenon 128x128 3g/HD/SD multi format matrix, power supply completely redundant, with system control and crosspoint redundancy, interfaced with Evertz multi viewer VIP Dueo Advanced with 128 ins and 8 outs. The video mixer is a Kayak HD300 based on 72 ins and 36 outs. The studio camera chosen are Grass Valley Group LDK6000 and some six AK-HC3500 by Panasonic which allow a fibre optics connection. A TSL Tallyman handles all Under Monitor Display and interfaces with matrix, video mixer and multi viewer. Ref signals are generated by Evertz SPG/TSG 5601MSC and distributions, conversions, mux/demux and system core are based again on Evertz series 7800. All interfaces for in/out contributions and distribution are guaranteed by multi format processors Evertz HD2014. All equipments are controlled by a Vistalink from the operational setup to control of all functions and workflow monitoring plus diagnostics. HD signals from/to control room/tv studio travel thanks to Evertz 3405 unit, supporting 32 HD configurable SD/HD signals. Nexus Star by Stagetech is the audio core mixer, totally redundant, with double power supply, double control cards, double fibre links to the various conversion devices strategically scattered in the production center as useful.
