NEP Australia Test Proves Out Andrews Hub Workflow The IP-based facility will comprise locations in Sydney and Melbourne By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 10:43 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
On Feb. 18, NEP Australia will open the Andrews Hub, an all-IP production facility that will be connected to more than 29 stadiums across the continent. Comprising a hub in Sydney, opening Feb. 18, and one in Melbourne, opening in March, the Andrews Hub lays the foundation for a new era of sports production in Australia. And, while final construction and testing has been taking place, the NEP Australia team managed to complete an on-air test from a temporary facility where the production team was 900 km (more than 500 miles) from the venue.
There are seven control rooms across Sydney and Melbourne, notes Marc Segar, director, technology, NEP Australia. However, we consider this one broadcast center in two physical locations because we can share just about any resource.
The temporary hub, which was set up at the Sydney facility, housed the production team - director, technical director, audio director, graphics and replay operators - for a Hyundai-A League soccer match taking place about 560 miles away in Brisbane. During the broadcast, live uncompressed HD signals from 10 Sony HDC-4300 4K/HD cameras, including high-frame-rate units, were sent from the venue to Sydney via NEP's new countrywide Distributed Production Network (DPN), with a fully redundant network at 50 Gbps. The production relied on ST 2110 and IP to deliver a live event to air in uncompressed HD, an industry first.
One of the seven control rooms in the NEP Australia Andrews Hub
The main driver from our client Fox Sports' perspective was, the broadcast quality must be the same, says Segar. With no compression, we minimize latency and have no impact to the quality of the pictures.
He adds that the biggest single challenge was getting the production team accustomed to being separated from the venue and also overcoming some of their perceptions about what it would be like to work remotely.
From a technology perspective, all the issues were resolved early on in our R&D phase, says Segar. We are now five projects into the go-live phase, and the general comfort level and environment in the Andrews Hubs are excellent and very quiet.
Each control room has a Sony XVS8000 production switcher, a Lawo mc 96 audio console, RTS intercoms, EVS replay systems, and a Boland true-UHD monitor wall.
Resources shared between the Sydney and Melbourne hubs include two Arista 7508R eight-slot network switches, each in a hitless configuration; a Lawo V_Matrix for core WAN gateways, processing, and multiview; RTS intercoms; IHSE IP-based KVM; and VSM control. A proprietary video-conferencing system developed by NEP also plays a key role, and Telstra is handling DPN connectivity to 29 of the venues, with several additional venues connected by dark fiber.
The new IP hubs will be complemented by four new all-IP trucks and seven existing NEP trucks that will be modified with an IP layer.
That will allow them to connect to either hub, says Segar. We will remain a mixed-use-facilities company as we balance projects at IP networked venues with those that are not connected, projects that don't make sense to cover via the hubs and, of course, allow other broadcasters to work in the traditional mode until such time as they are ready to move into the Andrews Hub.
Uncompressed SMPTE ST 2110 will play a big role in all of the IP facilities, a key to reducing latency and delays. The only times compression will be used will be when a project originates from one of seven venues where bandwidth is limited to 10 Gbps.
For those venues, we use VC 2, which is an ultra-low-latency compression technology, and compression is used only for contribution, Segar explains. Generally, we will employ 4:1 compression at these regional venues. However, because the environment is entirely virtualized IP, we can switch compression or even the ratio by the channel.
Fox Sports Australia will be among the top clients to be served out of the new facilities, and Steve Edwards, head of technology, Fox Sports Australia, says NEP has done a great job not only in building these world-class, state-of-the-art, all-IP facilities but also in working with the Fox Sports production and technical teams to enable the next generation of sports-broadcast production: Their willingness to embrace the newest IP technologies and emerging IP broadcast standards has been the key to success so far.
But the success of the facility will ultimately be about people, not technology.
Says Segar, Staff that have worked in the hubs so far like the size and lack of noise in the control room and [the sense of] being part of something truly groundbreaking.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils the First Look for Land of Sin' - Premier...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
NEP Australia Test Proves Out Andrews Hub Workflow The IP-based facility will comprise locations in Sydney and Melbourne By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
