Archive: News & Press Releases

09/2007

IBC 2007: EUROSCENA OB Truck Village under AURUS Control

Amsterdam, September 2007: At this year’s IBC in Amsterdam, the Italian Commercial TV-production company Euroscena, based in Milan and Rome, presented their new HD-enabled OB truck village to the public. These new TV trucks can create a mobile production centre with unprecedented capabilities, especially when used in combination, as shown during the IBC.

Euroscena contracted Thomson/Grass Valley to construct a set of two large OB trucks plus another vehicle as tender and power-supply. The ensemble named ‘Mobile Production Centre 34 High Definition’ or MPC 34 HD for short, hit the road early in 2007.
Space in OB trucks is usually at a premium. Not so with this fleet. When parked up, the main vehicle, 34A, can be enormously enlarged along its overall length using extensions on both sides. It then comprises two production control rooms, an AURUS audio control room, VTR and slomo workspaces, a camera control room and even a comfortable 25 m2 VIP zone. The second vehicle, 34B, offers an extra facility. This is a Chromakey equipped 30 m2 TV-production studio with a retractable side wall. It also offers a secondary production control room, a small AURUS audio-control room, and even toilets, which may well be another first in mobile production!

When parked alongside each other a roofed passageway can connect the two trucks. Thanks to its diesel generators the tender can feed this mobile production island with sufficient power to operate completely independent of the mains.

The choice of AURUS and NEXUS benefits the sound in many ways. Regardless of its power and the 1,272 sources and 1,024 destinations, this ultra-compact system requires just seven Base Devices occupying only 39 rack units in height. Another key factor was the AURUS’ direct access user interface and handy multichannel mixing capabilities. Euroscena uses this set-up for producing material in formats up to 7.1, which then can be Dolby E encoded and routed via NEXUS.

Euroscena has owned a big digital OB vehicle for TV productions with onboard STAGETEC technology since May 2004. This has been used at countless major events during recent years. The NEXUS optical network as well as the totally reliable CANTUS main and slave consoles blazed a trail for AURUS and NEXUS in this unparalleled new OB set-up.