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Timeline Television DANIEL MCDONNELL CEO
The new Ealing Broadcast Centre in West London has been built by Timeline as a state-ofthe-art 900sqm facility set over three floors. The facility, equipped with high-end VR studio sets, global connectivity and a large enterprise data centre, has been built to satisfy the everincreasing demand for remote production, with the F1 Hungarian Grand Prix for Whisper TV and Channel 4’s live coverage of the Paralympics among the first shows.
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Centre,” says McDonnell. “This not only furthers FE’s aim to reduce the carbon footprint by reducing international crew travel but enables the on-site TV compound to occupy a smaller physical footprint on-site.” Timeline has also launched a compact OB truck, Streamline 2, to facilitate traditional on-site productions, full remote production solutions and everything in between. “Streamline 2 enables remote productions to be delivered over fibre, internet and even over mobile connectivity using 4G and 5G,” says McDonnell. “Production teams have the flexibility to remote control the operation from Timeline’s Ealing Broadcast Centre, MediaCityUK or from their own facility.”
TSL Products MARK DAVIES
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTS AND TECHNOLOGY
Timeline facilitated BBC’s OB presentation coverage of Euro 2020, including the Wembley Final which became the UK’s most viewed television broadcast of the past 20 years. “Extensive planning was required for countless permutations, with crews on standby to travel to different locations at very short notice based on the outcome of matches,” says Daniel McDonnell, Timeline CEO. “Ultimately, Timeline provided facilities in Amsterdam, Baku, Glasgow and Wembley using a blend of traditional and remote production workflows to provide three levels of service to the BBC. Major matches at Wembley could be delivered sustainably in 4K UHD HDR using a traditional on-site OB model with limited emissions, thanks to the stadium’s proximity to Timeline’s West London base,” he adds. “For games further afield, an IP-driven remote production model facilitated on-site presentation with cameras sent back to Salford along with associated audio, over UEFA’s GigE circuits. A variation of this solution, dubbed OB Lite, saw streamlined on-site presentation delivered over host circuits to the IBC and onto Salford.” Timeline continued to provide technical facilities and crew to Aurora Media Worldwide and North One for their host broadcast and presentation coverage of the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship. “New for Season 7, Timeline provided a hybrid remote production with the English and rightsholder operations taking place in Timeline’s Ealing Broadcast 170
Davies says the integration and expansion of TSL’s control offering has expanded the range of functionality it can now offer broadcasters. “TSL has been working with TJ Sports, a joint venture between Tecent and Riot Games, on the first large-scale esports remote production centre in Asia,” Davies reveals. “With the help of TSL, TJ Sports did an excellent job of remotely producing the 2020 League of Heroes MidSeason Cup through innovative means and efficient team collaboration. TJ Sports Broadcast Production Center is now undergoing the second phase of construction to make the most of the latest IP broadcast technology; TSL will continue to play a big part.” Davies says TSL will be releasing new products across its complete product range. “We will continue to build on the virtualised and ST-2110based control offerings that we have developed for the Berklee School of Music in New York. We also appreciate that the cost of deployment for edge devices in 2110/IP infrastructures is a key consideration for tight budgets, as is being able to support the many flavours of audio over IP, so we are looking to address this with our audio range.”
“The Flex Control network, a distributed network of control nodes that can be added to existing systems or provide much needed standalone functionality, are continuing to be used by major sports TV Skyline leagues and broadcasters across the United ROBERT KIS States,” says Mark Davies, director of products CEO and technology at TSL Products. “Since TSL’s acquisition of DNF Controls, which developed “Remote productions have the Flex solutions, TSL has expanded its offering become a more regular feature by integrating Flex with its TallyMan routing at our company,” says TV Skyline and tally control system. Sports broadcasters CEO Robert Kis. “At the centre of this is our new are using these solutions to cost-effectively add Skyline Remote Center (SRC).” UMD naming and routing control alongside a distributed protocol layer with additional functionality, such as monitoring and logging SCTE-104.”
“In 2020, one of TSL’s biggest customers, NEP, used TSL’s power management in its flypacks,” adds Davies. “The MDU12-PMi and MDU14-B units have a great reputation for reliability, which is essential when including them in flypacks for live productions, such as the UFC Fight Island 2020 in Abu Dhabi and cricket in the UAE in 2020.”
Sports highlights for TV Skyline this year include delivering the host broadcasting of the 2020/21 UEFA Champions and Europa League on behalf on Sky Germany, Sky Austria and DAZN. “The biggest match was the Champions League quarter final between Dortmund and Man City with 30 cameras and production in UHD HDR,” says Kis. “In total we delivered 17 host broadcasts, with 10 host broadcasts for the first time in UHD HDR exclusively for SportTechJOURNAL AUTUMN 2021