BBC Northern Ireland acquires IP-based OB truck

BBC Northern Ireland has acquired an IP-based OB truck from Sony. 

Along with integrator Megahertz, Sony provided the truck with the broadcaster’s previous resources coming to the end of their life. With the BBC’s Belfast facilities aiming to switch from SDI to IP, it has interoperability between the two options, and has processing capabilities for both the truck and the facilities to be used and controlled by staff located either in the truck or the facilities.

It will serve as a main gallery for productions in the Belfast headquarters or be sent to locations as needed.

The truck is built around Sony’s Networked Live, an ecosystem of solutions for live production with hybrid on-premises and cloud capabilities. It  also includes a large number of third party products. Networked Live products used in this deployment include the camera network adaptor CNA-2 for camera control, HDCU-3500 CCU for SDI-IP adaptation for cameras, MLS-X1 for video switching, and MKS-R4020 remote control panels.

The media network is a fully redundant spine-leaf configuration and SDN (software-defined network) orchestration, based on SMPTE ST 2110, under the control of Nevion’s VideoIPath. VideoIPath controls not only the network, but also the end devices. It does so with a combination of custom-made drivers and NMOS interfaces.

BBC Northern Ireland, Megahertz, Sony, and Nevion (a Sony company) managed the project, which began after a public tender in 2022 and was delivered in spring 2024.