The sports broadcast scene in Europe is hotting up, and new entrants acquire rights and launch new channels in the competition for viewers with this lucrative genre. In France, beIN SPORT launched last year, and BT Sport has launched in the UK this year. To set up the broadcast operation, Al Jazeera turned to Unitecnic, a broadcast engineering and systems integrator based in Barcelona, with offices in Madrid, Lisbon, Miami, Buenos Aires and Dubai. Unitecnic is a business unit of MediaPro, part of WPP’s Imagina Group.

Launched at last year’s IBC, Sennheiser’s Digital 9000 wireless system has since become an integral part of the broadcasting, theatre and live audio worlds. The high-end solution is the first digital wireless system that can work without compression, transmitting full HD audio. We take a look back at what we’ve achieved together with our customers in a year of pristine audio transmission. It’s a journey featuring top events such as Eurovision, global superstars like Leona Lewis, renowned theatres, and national broadcasters. And this is only the start…

What production and sport have in common are the people. The heart of sport are the fans, the heart of production is the audience. Today's sport live production goes beyond sport by itself, and focuses on what is most important for both industries: the audience.

NEP’s EN1 — complete with A, B, C, and D units — is the newest and most technologically advanced addition to the company’s fleet. Originally slated for a 2014 roll out, the 1080p-capable EN1 will hit the road today for the first game of ESPN’s Monday Night Football doubleheader.

Blackmagic Design’s Teranex 2D Processor played an integral role during DreamHack Summer in bringing the gaming and digital experience to life for over 20,000 visitors, 10 million stream starts and 2.5 million unique viewers of the international digital festival.
DreamHack Summer 2013 continued the festival’s reputation for breaking records. As well as holding the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest LAN party, June’s event achieved the most viewing hours per user ever, with over 10 million stream starts and 2.5 million unique viewers over the weekend across a range of channels including national broadcast, live performances and online content.

BBC Sport’s host coverage of The Wimbledon Championships continued in 2013, maintaining its tradition of delivering high quality, compelling and professionally produced television. The entire event was captured and broadcast again in high definition, with SIS LIVE providing technical facilities to BBC Sport and the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) throughout the two week event.

When high quality LED lighting was introduced to the broadcast world it became the first serious contender for more than fifty years to challenge the dominance of traditional tungsten fixtures. Since then, more and more broadcasters have switched on to the latest high quality LEDs and have seen a raft of operational and financial benefits, from improved quality for the longer term, to significantly cheaper running costs and reduced energy bills.

Audio for sports broadcasting is a specialty that places extremely high demands on the equipment - the microphones in particular. They have to sound good while reproducing the sound of a complex, often irregular space; one must be able to set them up within a few hours; they must be easy to handle, yet robust enough to withstand wind and weather, and they must be reliable under rough, everyday conditions. And they must be nearly invisible, since they can’t be allowed to block the view of the event nor of the advertising banners. All this makes life very interesting for the sound engineers, planners, equipment operators and manufacturers who support this special field.

As the reality show Big Brother enters its 14th season on the CBS television network, RealNetworks once again relies on iStreamPlanet to provide multi-camera, 24/7, live streaming from the Big Brother house to subscribers of its SuperPass service. The live, online broadcast is a hit with Big Brother fans, providing them a constant stream of entertainment that they can’t get from the TV show. This always-on entertainment pulls viewers deeper into the show and RealNetworks’ community-fueled content.

From an Austrian perspective, the Alpine World Ski Championships 2013 were the highlight of the sporting year 2013. Schladming and the entire state of Styria was Austria’s window to the sporting world from 4 to 17 February.  Ski stars from 70 countries performed in 11 exciting and fair competitions to win one of the 33 medals.

Under commission from the Kazakhstan government and in partnership with the Istanbul-based system-integrator Akfa Technology, ARRI Lighting Solutions has designed and equipped the new Astana Media Center (AMC), a state-of-the-art, 75,500m² media complex in Astana, Kazakhstan's capital. As a result, the AMC has become one of the most advanced production facilities in the region, offering sophisticated studios and lighting tools, and enabling high-quality content creation for national and syndicated distribution.

Introduction
Next to its broadcasting centre in Stuttgart, SWR built a new television studio complex with four production studios as a substitute for the “Villa Berg” studios, in operation since 1964. The new studios were completed in late 2011.

Customer profile: Studios A/S is a leading full service facility provider in Denmark. Its home to TV shows such as Strictly come dancing, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Allstars, Luxury Trap, MasterChef and many more.

The first FIFA World Cup™ to be held in South America since 1978, the 20th in total, will take place in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014. It will be the second time Brazil has hosted the event and the first time consecutive tournaments have been played outside of Europe. The project will offer a distinct logistical challenge, given the size of the country in comparison to the previous FIFA World Cups™ to which HBS has been assigned as host broadcaster.

EPC required a system that could be built and tested within three weeks of the initial contract agreement, ready for use at the Vodafone Rally de Portugal, with editors and producers fully trained in this time. The ability to integrate GoPro files was also a key consideration for EPC when selecting a system as a lot of footage comes directly from GoPro cameras fitted in the rally cars themselves. And finally, the system had to have easy handling of HD material and quick time-to-air as EPC would be shooting the season’s programming entirely in HD with a very short turnaround time between rally heats. Quantel’s Enterprise sQ fast-turnaround production system was selected as the winning tender, successfully meeting EPC’s key criteria.