ITV Sport - Euro 2020 IBC

Presteigne Broadcast was awarded the IBC Facilities for the Euros by ITV Sport in late 2019. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in March 2020 the tournament was deferred for a year.

The IBC facility provided by Presteigne acted as the central hub for ITV Sports coverage of the championships and was located at the International Broadcast Centre just outside Amsterdam. All audio, video and communications were routed through the IBC facility, some multiple times.

Two venues, a studio in Maidstone, two Outside Broadcasts plus local host feeds totalled in excess of 80 incoming video feeds. With the requirement for 40 outgoing video circuits and comprehensive monitoring Presteigne selected a large Ultrix router providing a total of 112 inputs and 112 outputs. The router had 7 inbuilt multiviewers to feed the MCR gallery. Having MADI I/O allowed incoming ITV commentary to be taken in and embedded onto the incoming host feeds and sent to the UK. A smaller second router was provided as a back-up and worked in parallel. Both routers were controlled using a TSL Tallyman TM1 control system. A mix of TMCP control panels and TMVP virtual panel software on touch screen PCs provided a flexible interface.

Communications played a central part of the requirement from ITV so a fully populated Telex Adam communications frame was used. The frame contained 5 analogue 16 channel AIO cards, an Omneo card for local panels, a MADI card to connect to the router and a RVON card for remote site communications. Upto 80 4 wires were handled from Stratford Edit/EVS, Maidstone studio, venue OBs, host, Systembase codecs and Comrex units. A comprehensive communications position was provided to allow the engineer to monitor and control levels of all circuits. Three RTS Odin talkback systems were located across the studio in Maidstone, Wembley OB and Hamden OB. These were all connected via

RVON to provide additional communications paths across the network.

A MCR gallery of 8 50” monitors was built for the ITV engineers based in the IBC allowing all incoming and outgoing feeds to be monitored using the Ultrix inbuilt multiviewers. Three MCR engineer positions were created, each with a high quality Sony X1800 monitor and separate audio monitoring. Leader rasterisers on their own monitors were also provided along with talkback panels. Each position had a Dell touchscreen PC running TSL TMVP virtual router panel software. With so many sources and destinations the TMVP allowed customised pages to be created for routing allowing the MCR engineers to make clear and accurate routes as required. Something that cannot be done if limited to 32 or 16 buttons on a hardware panel.

Finally, an EVS system consisting of an 8 channel XT3, a XF 3 storage system, an IP director and XTAccess were also provided to provide local storage and playout of incoming sources. Connection to the host IBC EVS network allowed additional content to be imported.

Equipment supplied included

  • 2 Ross Ultrix Routers 112x122 and 72x72

  • TSL Tallyman TM1+ MK3 Controller

  • A mix of TMCP 16, TMCP 32 and TMVP control panels

  • EVS System including XT3, Xfile, IP Director and XTAccess

  • RTS Telex Communications Matrix 144x144

  • A wide range of Telex panels in KP5032, KP4016, EKP-32, PAP 32 & LCP-12

  • Monitoring galleries using 50” Samsung monitors