Extensive use of RTS intercom at the Games in Rio

Extensive use of RTS intercom at the Games in Rio posted: 28/08/2016

NBC Olympics selected RTS as its broadcast intercom provider for its production of 2016 Olympic Games in Rio

For the Rio Games NBC Sports was expanding its at-home operation to unprecedented levels, taking advantage of its spacious, 3-year-old suburban digs for the first time during a Summer Olympics. More than 1,100 employees, interns and contractors worked early morning to late night from Connecticut, helping to deliver NBC's promised 6,755 hours of, while 2,000 employees were heading to Rio for. The NBC Olympics team undertook significant efforts to retool some of the major building blocks at the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) and venues, including fiber interconnects, less wiring, more IP, new frame syncs, an IPTV system, router control, improved remote production methods, and, for audio, more MADI, Dante, and OMNEO.

The Games in Rio saw the most extensive deployment of RTS intercom to date, allowing the Games major broadcaster an unprecedented degree of comms control and connectivity between three control rooms at the International Broadcast Center (IBC) in Rio and eight control rooms at the home base in Connecticut.

The NBC Olympics Broadcast Operations Center in Stamford

Whereas the setup in Sochi for the 2014 Winter Games was almost all analog, the setup for Rio was almost all digital, with extensive and successful use of OMNEO Dante-based networking technology, MADI and RVON (RTS Voice Over Network). Along with the largest RTS trunking system ever deployed (with extensive use of RVON), the Games also represented the most extensive installation of OMNEO-enabled devices, which worked flawlessly.

Rio Trunking Map and the NBC Olympics Broadcast Operations Center equipment room in Rio

Six OMNEO OMI matrix interface cards were used for the broadcaster's Rio and Connecticut intercoms. Over 200 key-panels equipped with OMNEO OKI and OKP interface cards were in use at the IBC. Dozens of other Dante devices hooked into the OMI cards. All comms from the host broadcaster were provided by MADI, as were the tie lines to all the audio rooms for mix minus and program inputs. Three ARNIs (Audio Routed Network Interface) were used on two subnets.

NBC at the IBC in Rio and the NBC SPOC in Stamford worked seamlessly together

The NBC footprint measured 73,000 sq. ft. and encompassed two large control rooms, one small control room, two studios (plus a small insert studio), and a 5,500-sq.-ft. news-production area. All the facilities were connected to the Stamford via four AT&T 10-Gbps fibers. The center of the action in Rio was Control Room A and Studio One, where the network primetime show was created every night. When the network primetime show ended, Control Room A was tied to NBC's Copacabana Studio for the late-night show (Control Room B and the Copacabana Studio were linked for the daytime network production). Studio Two, meanwhile, was connected to a production-control room at the Sports Production Operations Center (SPOC) in Stamford for production of NBC Sports Network coverage.

More about OMNEO

Developed by RTS parent company Bosch and key industry partners, OMNEO media networking architecture allows the easy supervision and transport of control, media and other data over IP networks. OMNEO provides the highest levels of audio quality and synchronization whilst ensuring the lowest levels of latency - all in a highly reliable and secure set up. System, installation and maintenance costs are all kept competitively low due to the use of standard IT components.

RTS KP-5032 Panel

OMNEO is based on two key components: control data and media transport. Technologies such as Dante from Audinate for transport and AES70, also known as OCA (Open Control Architecture), for control are fully supported within OMNEO. Products with OMNEO onboard are enhanced by Bosch-specific features. OMNEO provides extensive interoperability, flexibility, reliability and future-proof technology by utilizing an open public standards. These technologies provide a number of options for the interconnection of equipment from different manufacturers to exchange control and media content. Additionally, OMNEO provides numerous advanced features and tools to support mission-critical system applications. Systems using the OMNEO media networking architecture can be scaled to include up to 10,000 nodes and can interoperate across multiple IP subnets and long distances for complex network designs and applications.

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