LOCUST VALLEY, NY, FEBRUARY 2, 2010 – As the Olympic torch is carried into BC Place Stadium for the official opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Games, MultiDyne Video & Fiber Optic System’s HD-1500 Fiber Optic Link will be in action transmitting signals from the announcer booths and red carpet. MultiDyne, a premier provider of fiber optic-based video and audio transport and routing solutions for broadcast and pro A/V applications, was chosen to supply its HD-1500 and LiGHTBoX^® field fiber transport systems for the Canadian broadcast by CP Communications, the largest provider of wireless equipment to the sports broadcasting industry.

For this year’s opening ceremonies, CP Communications required the option of monitoring both HD and SDI signals and wanted to transport video back and forth from its client’s announcer booths to the network’s broadcast trucks. As a longtime user of MultiDyne equipment and with over 60 HD-1500 links in-house, CP Communications knew that the HD-1500 was one of the few products on the market designed for monitoring multiple formats in one single unit. With this in mind, the HD-1500 was incorporated into booth kits assembled for the client’s French, English, combined French/English mix and red carpet announce booth kits of equipment to be used during the Games’ opening ceremonies.

“Reliable products are important for any project, but the Olympics and the live broadcast of the opening ceremonies absolutely steps up that need a notch,” says Kurt Heitmann, senior vice president of sales for CP Communications. “Security is also tighter for a major event of this stature, so you have to be able to rely on the equipment you ship in because you don’t have the opportunity to replace a product if it stops working. We have never had a failure with a MultiDyne product, and that gives us the confidence to recommend the HD-1500 to our customers, who are very comfortable using a high-quality solution like MultiDyne’s HD-1500 at this year’s opening ceremonies.”

Beyond its reputation with CP Communications for reliability, Heitmann also touts the HD-1500 as user-friendly, noting that the solution is easily rack-mountable unlike other smaller devices on the market that do not come with rack mounts. Further, as other products have much smaller displays, Heitmann appreciates the HD-1500’s large LED indicators for data rate, HD, lock and power that aid users who need to quickly identify certain functions.

In addition to the HD-1500 links, CP Communications will also provide clients at the Olympics with custom LiGHTBoX field fiber transport systems that will be used to transport audio and data bi-directionally as well as provide two-wire to four-wire communications for the camera operator.

“With MultiDyne, you can customize just about any product,” says Heitmann. “Their customer service is above and beyond and they are very flexible; they will work with you to develop unique, cost-effective products for you and your customers. We worked closely with them on the custom LiGHTBoX units and we just wouldn’t have been able to do that with some other manufacturers. As a company, we think MultiDyne is tops.”

The HD-1500 and LiGHTBoX units will be used at this year’s Vancouver Winter Games beginning February 12, 2010. For more information on the HD-1500 or LiGHTBoX, please visit www.multidyne.com.

Applications, Applications for Video Fiber Optic Transport, Broadband Cable Television Transport, Broadcast Television Transmission, Fiber Optic Transport Systems for Broadcast Television, Multiple signals, News, Uncategorized

Applications for Video Fiber Optic Transport

There are many applications for fiber optic communications.  Any application that requires high bandwidth or high bit rate communications is ideally suited for fiber optic transport.  The Television and Video industries are a perfect application for fiber optic transport.  Analog television is a relatively high bandwidth signal of more than 5 MHz.  Digital television or HDTV has bit rates of more than 3.0 Gbps.  High resolution computer graphics can have a bandwidth exceeding 165 MHz.  All of these television and video applications are ideal for fiber.

Broadcast Television Transmission

As mentioned earlier, television production and broadcast engineers have always sought out the best technology for media events such as the Olympics.  In the mid-80’s, fiber optic transport was introduced into the television industry.  Since that time that has been no looking back.  Fiber optics are used in all aspects of production and distribution of video and audio signals.

The state of the art for the transport of analog video is to use 12 bit video digital encoding.  The serial digital bit rate can vary from about 144 to 300 Mbps.  Please see the photo in figure 17 of a typical analog video and audio fiber optic link.

With the introduction of digital video in the 90’s, fiber optic transport continued to enjoy growth in the broadcast industry.  Digital video was encoded into 144 to 360 Mbps. These high bit rate video signals could only travel over copper up to about 300 meters.  Transport distance beyond 300 meters required fiber.

The transitioning to 100% digital or high definition television has created a need to transport signals with a bit rate as high as 3.0 Gbps.  High definition television or HD-SDI in its native or uncompressed from is 3.0 Gbps.  HD-SDI can only reach about 150 meters over a coax.  Once again, fiber is the only choice to reach distances beyond 150 meters.

Systems can be designed using many of the technologies described above.  We can mix analog and digital signal transport.  We can combine signals using Time-division and Optical multiplexing.  Figures 22 through 23 show typical applications.

Studio to Transmitter Fiber Optic Link, Figure 22

In the example in figure 22 we see a typical application of a Studio to Transmitter Link or STL.  A broadcast television station may typically reside in a downtown metropolitan area.  The television transmitter and satellite up and down links may be on a distance mountain top out side the city. This situation is a perfect application for fiber transport.  The system may require both analog video and digital video since the station may be in the midst of their conversion from analog to digital broadcast.  They will require signals in both direction to support downlink satellite video.  The diagram above shows a system with an eight channel CWDM and a variety of fiber optic transport links supporting analog video and audio as well as digital video in both directions.

Fiber Optic Trunking, Figure 23

The diagram in figure 23 shows an application where many channels of video and audio are combined together over one fiber for back-haul feeds, cable television, common carrier or Telco.   The system uses time-division multiplexing or TDM to combine groups of 8 channels of video with audio into single wavelengths.  The optical multiplexing or CWDM technology is used to combine the wavelgths with groups of 8 videos onto one fiber.  The combined technique of TDM and CWDM provides a  fiber transport capacity of more than 144 video channels on ONE fiber.

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