
British Touring Car Championship test runs Vista's 5G Create project for in-stadium broadcast feeds By Ann-Marie Corvin
Friday, September 17, 2021 - 09:37
Print This Story
The Vista Project teamed with the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) to integrate into a 5G infrastructure to offer a high-quality in-stadium broadcast feed
The second phase of the UK government-backed 5G Create project Video In Stadia Technical Architecture (Vista) was unveiled at the O2 Arena in London on Wednesday (15 September), showing footage from the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) being integrated into a 5G infrastructure to offer a high-quality in-stadium broadcast feed.
Vista which kicked off with a feasibility study earlier this year aims to demonstrate how enhanced interactive viewing experiences can be delivered direct to devices, using 5G broadcast technology at live entertainment venues.
Run by the Digital Television Group (DTG), the £2.3 million project, which has received £1.3 million of support from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), comprises a ten company-strong consortium that includes network operator O2, innovation agency Digital Catapult, Rohde & Schwarz, Global Wireless Solutions and Imaginary Pictures.
The second stage of the project focused on a demonstration at the O2's Blueroom venue in Greenwich, using motor racing footage provided by BTCC.
Tour car test run
While the BTCC is given widespread exposure on the ITV network in the UK, organiser TOCA has been looking at ways to add value trackside for its legion of die hard fans; around 380,000 of whom attend the championship's events in an average year.
As Kevin Zemrowsky, co founder of Imaginary Pictures, which supplied the production and live camera expertise for the demo, explains: the organisation wants to give fans more of a sense of what's happening once the cars leave the pit lane.
Right now on-site spectators can see the cars lining up at the start line, but then they all drive off and you might not see the cars again until they come back but then that might be in a different order, or there might be fewer drivers, he says.
While television viewers are supplied with a constant feed of information, the venues tend to rely on a couple of screens, which is a bit of a one-size-fits-all solution, he adds
Sam Riches, technical officer at the BTCC, adds that TOCA had already been searching for ways to exploit 5G to make onsite viewing more seamless, delivering extra information to devices, allowing them to see replays, even jumping from driver-to-driver inside the car, or from different angles. However utilising such 5G cellular network capacity is expensive.
He says: At the moment we're limited in the number of on boards that we can physically get off the cars because of the cost of the infrastructure required to do it.
Alex Buchan, DTG strategic technologist and lead, adds that providing enough network capacity to support even a basic service let alone provide premium video is another challenge for organisers and venues.
The beautiful thing about FeMBMS is that you can put one or two antenna in a stadium and it is enough to cover the whole venue. That makes it particular effective in stadiums but also for other events too
Vista's objective is to offer a more efficient use of network resources by eschewing the standard unicast delivery model used by cellular networks in favour of an internationally-standardised multicast broadcast, multicast solution, FeMBMS, the 17th incarnation of which is set to be released for 5G next year.
As David Owens, head of technical trials at O2, which is acting as the technical lead on the project, explains: One of the complicated things with stadium solutions is that the more people you have involved in the stadium the more base stations you need and the more cost that incurs.
The beautiful thing about FeMBMS is that you can put one or two antenna in a stadium and it is enough to cover the whole venue. That makes it particular effective in stadiums but also for other events too.
Network deployment
According to Owens, the easiest way to converge 5G and broadcast is to create an overlay over the top of the network So you can still use your 5G network infrastructure to manage and control that.
For the Vista demo, Digital Catapult provided the 5G test bed network while Rohde & Schwarz provided the equipment, systems and expertise for a multicast/broadcast overlay network based on FeMBMS.
Footage taken from a BTCC race on the Thruxton circuit a couple of weeks earlier, which captured all the streams that the sport would normally cover for the broadcast, was passed over to the Vista team to transcode.
According to Zemrowsky, over the course of the project the team tested a number of different ways of getting the content into the system included taking direct IP feeds from the cameras.
However, a necessary processing step, containerised controlling in the cloud, was required before transmission over FeMBMS. Recently joined consortium member Ateme provided the encoding system that packaged the camera feeds into the correct formats for broadcast distribution while Ori Industries provided the Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) platform that enables encoding for live sports streaming services on 5G networks.
Buchan explains: The MEC solution removes the need for dedicated hardware at venues to be able to encode the video feeds. You could have the MEC solution provided by Ori, which would essentially have the Ateme encoding solution as an application on a phone that could be started up and shut down as needed.
This could mean for venues that are not in use regularly or that cater for smaller/not as well known types of events they could deploy this on generic hardware that could also be used for other things o
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
21/01/2026
Australia's Greatest Conman? premieres 24 February on SBS and SBS On Demand
Media releases
The $900 million dollar mystery that fooled our nation Austra...
21/01/2026
SBS ignites Lunar New Year with bold storytelling for The Year of the Fire Horse
21 January, 2026
Media releases
SBS is charging into Lunar New Year 2026 w...
21/01/2026
The Living Room Remains Central: Nielsen Highlights Growing TV Screen Dominance ...
21/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Pinterest
Bluesky
Email...
21/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Pinterest
Bluesky
Email...
21/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Pinterest
Bluesky
Email...
21/01/2026
Telestream , the industry's leading provider of content lifecycle management and media workflow orchestration, and Quantum Corporation (NASDAQ: QMCO) today ...
21/01/2026
Lightware s TPN ecosystem brings a new level of predictability and structure to 10G AV-over-IP deployments, offering professional AV integrators a deterministic...
21/01/2026
Wisycom, a global leader in advanced wireless RF solutions, launches its new wideband antenna matrix, MATF, which supports RF and fiber for demanding multi-zone...
21/01/2026
Grass Valley will demonstrate how it is powering scalable, future-ready live production at FOMEX 2026, taking place February 2 4 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Exhibi...
21/01/2026
BCNEXXT, the developers of the advanced playout platform Vipe, today announced that OKAST, the monetization-first OTT platform provider, is using BCNEXXT's ...
21/01/2026
Revamped design enables advanced capabilities, leading with powerful IP to HDMI conversion
Magewell, developer of innovative, high-performance video I/O and I...
21/01/2026
Jan 20th 2026, Changsha Kiloview today announced the launch of two major additions to its AV-over-IP ecosystem: the AVX24-4 Media HUB and KiloLink Station, ma...
21/01/2026
Latest version of enterprise-class Buttons brings simple, coherent control to more than 700 professional devices and applications
Bitfocus, the specialist in ...
21/01/2026
Clear-Com is pleased to announce the appointment of Kari Eythorsson as the new Regional Sales Manager (RSM) for Southeast Asia & Australia, based in Singapore,...
21/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Pinterest
Bluesky
Email...
21/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Pinterest
Bluesky
Email...
21/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Pinterest
Bluesky
Email...
21/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Pinterest
Bluesky
Email...
21/01/2026
January 21st, 2026
TRIBECA FILMS TO RELEASE INDEPENDENT DOCUMENTARY FILM WE...
21/01/2026
Wednesday 21 January 2026
Backing Britain on the global stage: Sky becomes an o...
21/01/2026
Back to All News
What's Next on Netflix Korea: Every Emotion, One Bold 2026 Slate
Entertainment
21 January 2026
GlobalSouth Korea
Link copied to clipbo...
21/01/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Presents Its Italian 2026 Slate: The Year of the Stars
(Photo credit: Virginia Bettoja / Netflix)
Entertainment
21 January 2026
Gl...
21/01/2026
Fox Corporation Executives to Discuss Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 Financial Resul...
21/01/2026
Baselight v7 brings colourists and post-houses smarter mattes, faster workflows and deeper control
FilmLight, known for its detailed colour toolset and longsta...
21/01/2026
RT News is pleased to announce the appointment of Jackie Fox as its new Washington Correspondent. Jackie is a multimedia journalist with RT News and has repor...
21/01/2026
From skilled trades to startups, AI's rapid expansion is the beginning of th...
20/01/2026
SVG Sit-Down: BitFire's Jim Akimchuk on the Future of Cloud, Remote, Softwar...
20/01/2026
From architecture to reality: What CBC's Milano Cortina 2026 workflows tell ...
20/01/2026
Milano Cortina 2026: Making the Winter Olympics and Paralympics workflow work fo...
20/01/2026
Countdown to Milano Cortina 2026: SVG Launches SportsTechLive Blog in Lead-up to...
20/01/2026
Grand finale: Rally Saudi Arabia pushes WRC to make the most of cameras and dron...
20/01/2026
State of Change: What's Happening in the Remote-Production Business?NEP Group, Game Creek Video, Dome Productions, Mobile TV Group, Program Productions exec...
20/01/2026
CFP National Championship 2026: A Look Back at SVG's Complete CoverageGo behind the scenes with ESPN, Game Creek Video, Van Wagner, and the champion Indiana...
20/01/2026
The Gotham, Film Independent, and Creators Coalition on AI Join Alliance
by Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director, Sundance Institute's Artist Programs...
20/01/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
20/01/2026
December, the first month of winter and the holiday season, has traditionally encouraged families to spend time together in front of the television. During this...
20/01/2026
During December, streaming's share of TV viewing in Mexico settled at 24.3%, an increase of 0.1 share points from the previous month.
Disclaimer: YUMI TV,...
20/01/2026
Christmas Day is Most-Streamed Day Ever with 55 Billion Viewing Minutes, led by...
20/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/01/2026
Disguise and ASB GlassFloor today announced a strategic partnership that turns the arena floor into a fully customizable interactive digital surface. This will ...
20/01/2026
Last summer, ITV celebrated the tenth anniversary of its popular reality dating show, Love Island. To ramp up the excitement of series 12 (launched in the UK on...
20/01/2026
Berklee's Mark Ethier Named One of SPIN's Most Influential People in Mus...
20/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/01/2026
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/01/2026
Emergent, a provider of AI-powered media production solutions, today announced its presence at ISE 2026 in Barcelona, taking place February 3 6, where it will u...