Media Links Provides Transmission Links for Brazilian Football Venues
June 15, 2013 marked the start of an exciting series of soccer tournaments in Brazil. Two of the highlights include the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, which ran from June 15-30, and the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which will be played June 12 to July 13 in 2014. The FIFA World Cup is the single largest sporting event in the world and all soccer fans will be tuned in. The Media Links MD8000 HD-SDI over IP transmission technology and solutions were chosen to serve all contribution links for the FIFA Confederations Cup.
Media Links partner and systems integrator, VIDI Gmbh was selected to supply and support the technology that was used to link the contribution circuits between the six venues. The six venues, located all over Brazil from the north in Castelao all the way to Rio de Janerio’s Maracanã stadium, were each linked to the International Broadcast Coordination Center (IBCC), located in Belo Horizonte the capital and largest city in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, in the southeastern region of the country.
The venues were linked with the IBCC using fiber optic cable, and all content was fed back and forth between the venues and the hub, leveraging an IP backbone. The MD8000 transport solution serves as a networking platform, which eliminates additional points of failure and complexity within the signal path, ensuring zero delay in the end-to-end transmission path.
The MD8000 system is also scalable and modular, which means the configuration of the system can be matched to the demands of individual situations. Robust redundancy with a hitless operation supports its strength as platform that guarantees quality of service all the way to the edge and the end viewer.
Media Links’ MD8000 Media Transport System is known worldwide for offering a high level of flexibility and signal integrity for all types of video, audio, and data transport applications, specifically for media networking needs of carriers, large broadcasters, as well as smaller end users.
VIDI provided turnkey services for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup, including two engineers at each of the six stadium venues, and four engineers at the IBCC. Services include initial installation, as well as monitoring during the entire transmission period of the event.
Host Broadcast Services (HBS), Host Broadcaster of the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup are responsible for all the audio and video coverage of the tournaments. HBS also oversees the installation of all equipment related to the coverage. HBS chose VIDI Gmbh based on their past experience together, and the great success of the UEFA Euro2012 tournament, whereby all contribution links were served by the Media Links MD8000 HD-SDI over IP transmission solutions and codecs.