Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

British Touring Car Championship Test Runs Vista's 5G Create Project for In-Stadium Broadcast Feeds

20/09/2021

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
LINK: https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/british-tour-car-championship...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

01/06/2026

Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 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...

02/05/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Search, Faster Editing, and an AI-Ready Foundation for Modern Media

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

01/05/2026

NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to Integrate Dolby's Full Suite of Premium Picture and Sound Innovations

January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...

30/04/2026

Avid powers faster workflows and next-generation immersive audio with latest Pro Tools release

Avid powers faster workflows and next-generation immersive audio with latest Pro...

30/04/2026

Ocean Blue Software Launches ATSC 3.0 Inspector for Smart TVs

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/04/2026

Digital Azul positions Lisbon as a remote production hub...

Scalable broadcast-grade production over public internet, replacing traditional OB workflows...

30/04/2026

V Nova Brings DTV Deployment LCEVC Ecosystem Progress and...

Live demonstrations highlight LCEVC ecosystem momentum, AI-powered video pipelines, and expansion across broadcast, streaming, and social media. DTV (TV 3.0) ...

30/04/2026

Student Spotlight: Matthew Leon

Student Spotlight: Matthew Leon The dual major shares his path from community college to Berklee, and how his heritage influences his work. April 29, 2026 B...

30/04/2026

Berklee Artists to Perform at Major Global Music Festivals

Berklee Artists to Perform at Major Global Music Festivals As part of the Berklee Popular Music Institute, students will perform at Lollapalooza, Governors Ba...

30/04/2026

Study: Rokus Low-Cost, Ad-Free Howdy Streamer Hits 1 Million Subs

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/04/2026

MLS Innovation Lab Selects AI Partners

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/04/2026

NRB Files FCC Complaint Over Jimmy Kimmel Live!' Monologue

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/04/2026

D.C. Court Denies Emergency Stay of Nexstar/Tegna Merger

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/04/2026

NAB Criticizes FCC for Ordering Early Renewal of ABC-Owned Stations

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/04/2026

FCC Approves Station Swaps Between Scripps and Gray Media

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

30/04/2026

Telestream Introduces Pulse - a Software-Defined Test an...

A flexible monitoring platform designed to simplify ST 2110 operations, consolidate vendor tools, and support modern live production environments. See it at NAB...

30/04/2026

Langlev Takes Run Amok to Sundance with Zeiss Supreme Pri...

Sundance-premiering Run Amok is an expressive, unconventional take on today's teen experience, replete with musical numbers. When cinematographer Shachar ...

30/04/2026

Studio Technologies Elevates Jacksonville State Universit...

JACKSONVILLE, AL, APRIL 29, 2026 Jacksonville State University, known as Jax State and a proud NCAA Division I member of Conference USA, has transformed its a...

30/04/2026

Knowledge Network selects ThinkAnalytics to launch AI-pow...

Transforming viewer and content data into real-time intelligence to deliver relevant streaming experiences at scale ThinkAnalytics, the global leader in AI-pow...

30/04/2026

Sports Production, Delivery is Big Biz at NAB

Sports Production, Delivery is Big Biz at NAB Andy Marken April 29, 2026 0 Comments Hero image source: NAB One of the neat things about trade shows i...

30/04/2026

Former Kerry footballer and broadcaster Dara Cinnide investigates the century-old murder of a Kerry man in new RT documentary

Rian na Fola airs on RT One and RT Player on Monday May 4 Rian na Fola is a o...

30/04/2026

It's Gonna Be May: 16 Games Hit the Cloud This Month, With More NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Power

It's gonna be May - and the cloud's in full festival mode. 16 games ar...

30/04/2026

April 29, 2026

Scripps Research ranks third in 2026 Cure Innovation Index April 29, 2026 LA JOLLA, CA Scripps Research ranked third in the inaugural 2026 Cure Innovation In...

29/04/2026

Churchill Downs Racetrack Lifts Curtain on New Big Board Ahead of Kentucky Derby Week

It was a delicate job in a 150-year-old venue laden with traditions. Begun at th...

29/04/2026

How the MLS Innovation Lab Enhances Everything From Athlete Performance to Production to Ticket Sales

In annual event, the league gives startup companies the opportunity to prove the...

29/04/2026

Save the Date: SVG Venues & Teams Summit Travels South to Miamis Kaseya Center on Aug. 12

Panel discussions, networking, and a facility tour will take place in the renova...

29/04/2026

The Cast and Crew of Conbody VS Everybody Have Each Other's Backs for Life

(L-R) Derek Drescher, Coss Marte, and Syretta Wright have each other's backs. (Micheal Hurcomb/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival) By Veronika Lee Cla...

29/04/2026

Free Tilt EQ plug-in from Techivation

Combines EQ and harmonic distortion Techivation's latest release is a simple EQ designed to offer quick control over a source's overall tonal balanc...

29/04/2026

Expressive E launch the Osmose CE

Two new MPE controllers announced Expressive E caused quite a stir when they released the Osmose, making the sort of expression that was once reserved for p...

29/04/2026

iZotope RX 12 is here

New modules & enhanced machine-learning The latest version of iZotope's flagship restoration suite is now available, and now offers over 50 tools design...

29/04/2026

Surgeon Dr Jasmina Kevric wins 2026 Les Murray Award

Surgeon Dr Jasmina Kevric wins 2026 Les Murray Award 29 April, 2026 Media releases Australia for UNHCR and SBS are proud to announce that Dr Jasmina Kevric...

29/04/2026

YEP Spotlight: Julissa Padilla

Some people stumble into their passion. Julissa Padilla walked straight into a film vault. For her, entertainment was never just about the movies themselves. It...

29/04/2026

Clear-Com Promotes Brian Grahn, Ben Turnwell to Expanded Roles

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/04/2026

The CW Unveils Major Streaming Deals with ESPN and Roku

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/04/2026

Clear-Com Announces New Roles for Brian Grahn and Ben Tur...

Clear-Com has appointed Brian Grahn as Market Outreach Manager of the Americas and Ben Turnwell as Business Development Manager for EMEA live, expanding their ...

29/04/2026

Reduce Workflow Complexity with nxtedition at MPTS 2026

nxtedition is bringing its range of consolidated production tools to MPTS 2026, with new developments spanning transcription, editing, graphics and AI-assisted ...

29/04/2026

Telxius taps Synamedia to unlock seamless global multi-CD...

Quortex Switch to boost the streaming experience for Telxius customers, reaching millions of viewers worldwide Synamedia and Telxius, the leading global connec...

29/04/2026

freispace and Projective Announce Joint Showcase of Integ...

freispace, the leading ERP-as-a-Service platform for media and entertainment production, and Projective, a leading provider of post-production collaboration tec...

29/04/2026

DHD Celebrates 30th Anniversary at 2026 NAB Show

DHD reports strong interest in its broadcast audio product range, exhibited at the April 19th-22nd NAB Show in Las Vegas. The event attracted a claimed 58,000 a...

29/04/2026

Student Spotlight: Alan Catz

Student Spotlight: Alan Catz The Argentine film and game composer talks about working on League of Legends, receiving Berklee's BMI Award, and the lifelon...

29/04/2026

Jay Jennings Builds the Worlds You Hear on Screen

Jay Jennings Builds the Worlds You Hear on Screen The supervising sound designer behind A Minecraft Movie, The Meg, Letters from Iwo Jima, and dozens of other...

29/04/2026

Paramount Will be 49.5% Foreign Owned After WBD Merger

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/04/2026

NAB Show 2026: AI, Vertical and BPS Dominate Broadcasters' Discussions

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/04/2026

IAB Tech Lab Announces New OpenRTB Attributes

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

29/04/2026

Meet the eight finalists for RT Today's TV Home Cook competition

Voting opens at 4pm today RT 's Today show have announced the eight finalists for their TV Home Cook competition. Amateur cooks from Cork, Dublin, Galway ...

29/04/2026

VEON and Kyivstar Fulfill Commitment to Invest USD 1 Billion in Ukraine over 2023-2027 Ahead of Schedule

29 Apr 2026 VEON and Kyivstar Fulfill Commitment to Invest USD 1 Billion in Ukr...

29/04/2026

U challenges stars and their dogs to compete for Wagging Rights

Rhod Gilbert, Harriet Kemsley, Kae Kurd, Sara Pascoe and Vicki Pattison to take part in brand new series on free streaming service U London, 29th April 2026: F...