SIS LIVE Deliver New Bespoke OB for ESPN America

On 17th September SIS 65 will make its first outing to cover Blackburn Rovers versus Arsenal at Ewood Park

SIS LIVE, one of Europe’s largest outside broadcast (OB) and satellite uplink supplier, will launch the latest addition to its fleet, SIS 65, on the 17th September.

After securing a multi million pound three year deal with ESPN in July 2010, SIS LIVE has delivered a full season of football to an exceptionally high standard. Part of this commitment to ESPN was to innovate and offer new ways of covering and delivering the football to ESPN customers globally. SIS 65 has been designed specifically for the requirements of ESPN America.

The SIS 65 build was commissioned by ESPN to provide coverage of English Premier League (EPL) games for the US market by adding on to selected matches already broadcast in the UK. The programmes will be presented by Ian Darke and Steve McManaman with pitch side reports coming, in the main part, from Darrell Currie.

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SIS 65 is a self-contained, small footprint, high resource truck capable of delivering pitch side presentation, commentary position coverage, EVS analysis, IP services and uplink through its 1.8m dual thread system.

The 11.5 metre vehicle was designed by the SIS LIVE in-house engineering team, has a Mercedes chassis and is fully HD capable and 5.1 surround sound ready, as well as having the ability to carry its own cable and equipment loads. The 2-tier single-expand production vehicle layout gives space for 7 production staff and 7 operators, as well as including a dedicated 3 person VTR area and has the added advantage of being operable without being expanded. SIS 65 is 4 camera capable, featuring a For-A mixer, a Miranda hybrid router, glue and multiviewers, a Calrec Zeta audio console and a Riedel comms system.

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Stephen Cook, executive producer, ESPN, says “Having developed our requirements over the past year we approached SIS LIVE to deliver a custom-built, compact and self-sufficient unit which would provide us with a high level of facility for use over the next two years.”

On 17th September SIS 65 will make its first outing to cover Blackburn Rovers versus Arsenal at Ewood Park. Although built to serve ESPN requirements SIS 65, when available, will be able to take on other ad hoc work such as Champions League matches.

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David Meynell, managing director, SIS LIVE, says, “The delivery of SIS 65, which was bespoke designed and built to ESPN specifications, demonstrates our commitment to serving our clients with high quality vehicles to meet their needs. SIS 65’s small size, flexibility and ease of deployment make it a significant addition to our fleet.”