Eye on the ball

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa drawing nearer, crews are busily installing all the necessary technology required to support such an enormous world-class event. Sound and Stage takes a look at Gearhouse South Africa's role in kitting out Johannesburg's new Soccer City Stadium.

Assignment:

System Solutions, part of the Gearhouse South Africa Group of Companies, has been awarded a $39 million contract by the City of Johannesburg to supply and install a high definition IPTV, digital signage video distribution system as well as two large format, high resolution outdoor LED screens at the brand new Soccer City Stadium venue.

The 95,000 capacity Soccer City is located near Soweto, South Africa, and will host much of the 2010 FIFA World Cup action including the final and opening and closing ceremonies.

Outdoor LED screens

The two 86m² Lighthouse R16i/o-II screens comprised of 224 lightweight LED panels will be installed, fed by a state-of-the-art Vista Spyder video control system, running in conjunction with Christie Digital's newly released Vista Universal Routing Switcher (URS-1608). The control system has been designed for maximum flexibility, with all common formats accommodated at the input and output stages.

The Vista signal processors will ensure that all media and broadcast signals can be run through one system, replacing entire racks of scalers, transcoders, aspect-ratio converters and frame-rate converters with just one device. The content layout of all outputs can be treated as independent or combined pixel spaces. These can be altered in real time, enabling multiple inputs to be displayed as independent layers on any output.

The LED display screens will not only relay action, sponsorship graphics, ad stings, et cetera, but will also function as the stadium's electronic scoreboards.

Control system

AV Stumpfl ISEO has been selected as the main control platform to pull all the elements of the installation into one master control system with the ability to operate and communicate with all systems, devices and applications. In addition to this, it will monitor devices and systems and provide fault reporting to the stadium's property and building management systems.

The venue operations manager will have the ability to override all elements of the AV system for emergency purposes when required. ISEO was chosen primarily for its open platform. However, the technology also provides the data capture, operation and graphic display of the scoreboard and scoring system. It has the ability to do time-keeping, display team information, player and graphic images such as team colours, logos, national flags and game capture statistics.

It will also control the video mixing and switching, as well as all playback devices in the system and will allow a single input to control the entire video flow to the main LED screens, digital signage and IPTV systems.

HD/IPTV system

The high definition video control, digital signage and IPTV signal distribution systems will put the stadium at the cutting-edge of modern technology. System Solutions will supply approximately 160 AV Stumpfl ISEO digital signage systems in all public areas of the stadium for general information and commercial advertising purposes. Displays will be constantly updated and playback pre-recorded media content, together with multiple broadcast mixes which are able to be streamed live, to any layer on any display.

System Solutions will also provide a multi-channel high definition and standard definition IPTV distribution system comprising high definition hardware encoders, digital video broadcast gateways at the head-end and high definition receivers and display screens to back of house, VIP and hospitality suites.

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