TV Skyline’s Ü7 HD is on the Road

Ü7 HD is 4.6 meters wide and offers nearly 60 square meters of space for 32 workplaces. This is twice the number of operator positions of previous TV Skyline OBVans making Ü7 HD suitable for a wide range of clients, including broadcasters, event agencies, corporate clients and more.

One of the biggest advantages is the offering of three separate control rooms that are all under the control of a single Snell Kahuna 360 vision mixer and a Snell Sirius 840 router. Ü7 HD has a main control room and a second control room. The third control room that measures about 10 square meters is located in the tender truck. There is also room in the main OB truck for six EVS replay positions as well as three or four in the tender truck.

The Kahuna has 5M/Es and every physical M/E board can do up to four different mixes which adds up to 20 mix effects. And one special thing is that this is first installation of the Snell Maverick panel. TV Skyline has worked closely with Snell, helping the company to develop a control interface that is comprised of modules that can be put together like puzzle pieces. This enables TV Skyline to change the mechanical configuration without the need for tools or changing the cabling, e.g. you can change the T-bar or control button set-up for every production or take a module out from the first control room and put it into the second one.

For sports productions it is typical that the host signal is created in the main control room and then there is a second and third control room need for unilateral takers with editing capabilities for highlights. While the Bundesliga was a consideration when designing the truck it was not the main focus as the goal is to keep it busy doing high-end entertainment shows and concerts.

Shows and concerts are the events where high-end quality from both the vision and audio side is a must. Ü7 HD is able to make a live broadcast of a classical concert or opera in 5.1 Dolby but also stereo at the same time and doing isolated recording on hard disk drives. The sound area features a Lawo mc²66 with 56 faders, Dynaudio monitors and has high quality acoustics design.

The unit is also ready for Ultra HD as it includes a Virtual Studio Manager (VSM) control system from L-S-B that can be configured for 4K by taking four HD inputs and outputs and creating a single 4K signal. “Also at the moment the Kahuna vision mixer is the best at handling 4K signals”, explains Wolfgang Reeh, CEO and founder of TV Skyline. “And last but not least we also have a Sony 4K monitor inside the truck. What we don’t have are 4K cameras.”

However the truck has 20 Ikegami HDK-97A, two HDK-970A cameras and one Ikegami/NAC HiMotion MKII camera. “We did extensive tests to see which camera provides the best picture quality, the lowest amount of noise, and handles bad lighting the best and for us the best picture was from the Ikegami cameras,” Reeh adds. “Fujinon lenses are also on board and they do the best job of handling the resolution of 1080p cameras,” Reeh concludes.

Finally two Riedel intercom matrixes are available to manage all the communications necessary to manage any size of international events.