The sports broadcast scene in Europe is hotting up, and new entrants acquire rights and launch new channels in the competition for viewers with this lucrative genre. In France, beIN SPORT launched last year, and BT Sport has launched in the UK this year. To set up the broadcast operation, Al Jazeera turned to Unitecnic, a broadcast engineering and systems integrator based in Barcelona, with offices in Madrid, Lisbon, Miami, Buenos Aires and Dubai. Unitecnic is a business unit of MediaPro, part of WPP’s Imagina Group.

Launched at last year’s IBC, Sennheiser’s Digital 9000 wireless system has since become an integral part of the broadcasting, theatre and live audio worlds. The high-end solution is the first digital wireless system that can work without compression, transmitting full HD audio. We take a look back at what we’ve achieved together with our customers in a year of pristine audio transmission. It’s a journey featuring top events such as Eurovision, global superstars like Leona Lewis, renowned theatres, and national broadcasters. And this is only the start…

What production and sport have in common are the people. The heart of sport are the fans, the heart of production is the audience. Today's sport live production goes beyond sport by itself, and focuses on what is most important for both industries: the audience.

NEP’s EN1 — complete with A, B, C, and D units — is the newest and most technologically advanced addition to the company’s fleet. Originally slated for a 2014 roll out, the 1080p-capable EN1 will hit the road today for the first game of ESPN’s Monday Night Football doubleheader.

Blackmagic Design’s Teranex 2D Processor played an integral role during DreamHack Summer in bringing the gaming and digital experience to life for over 20,000 visitors, 10 million stream starts and 2.5 million unique viewers of the international digital festival.
DreamHack Summer 2013 continued the festival’s reputation for breaking records. As well as holding the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest LAN party, June’s event achieved the most viewing hours per user ever, with over 10 million stream starts and 2.5 million unique viewers over the weekend across a range of channels including national broadcast, live performances and online content.

BBC Sport’s host coverage of The Wimbledon Championships continued in 2013, maintaining its tradition of delivering high quality, compelling and professionally produced television. The entire event was captured and broadcast again in high definition, with SIS LIVE providing technical facilities to BBC Sport and the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) throughout the two week event.

When high quality LED lighting was introduced to the broadcast world it became the first serious contender for more than fifty years to challenge the dominance of traditional tungsten fixtures. Since then, more and more broadcasters have switched on to the latest high quality LEDs and have seen a raft of operational and financial benefits, from improved quality for the longer term, to significantly cheaper running costs and reduced energy bills.

Following the 2001 World Championship, a memorable event for France as the Men National team won the title, handball became then a very popular sport, and demands of videos kept increasing.

With a 57-year history, the Eurovision Song Contest is the world’s most-watched non-sporting event and this year was broadcast live into 44 countries – as far as Eurovision-mad Australia! 11,000 spectators had secured themselves tickets to the final, enjoying the exuberant party atmosphere and the powerful live sound in the Malmö Arena. The audience helped make the show – becoming an integral part of it when their LED bracelets turned the auditorium into a sea of little lights or lit up to create the national colours of the next artist to enter the stage.

Audio for sports broadcasting is a specialty that places extremely high demands on the equipment - the microphones in particular. They have to sound good while reproducing the sound of a complex, often irregular space; one must be able to set them up within a few hours; they must be easy to handle, yet robust enough to withstand wind and weather, and they must be reliable under rough, everyday conditions. And they must be nearly invisible, since they can’t be allowed to block the view of the event nor of the advertising banners. All this makes life very interesting for the sound engineers, planners, equipment operators and manufacturers who support this special field.

Once L-ACOUSTICS were selected as the brand of choice for the sound system at the Olympic Stadium for the Olympics and Paralympics at London 2012, the collective team faced a gargantuan task. Exceptional sound was required to electrify a brand new stadium with a capacity of 80,000 for the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Olympics and Paralympics as well as for every single athletic event held within the Olympic Stadium over a 29 day period in total.

All Australians have a link with their nation’s capital, but we’re sometimes guilty of taking it for granted. 2013 presents an ideal opportunity to get closer to Canberra, both the city itself and its national and symbolic roles. In 2013, we celebrate 100 years since Lady Denman, wife of then Governor-General Lord Denman, stood upon the newly laid Foundation Stones and announced that the name of the new Australian capital would be Canberra.

The Royal Opera House, in London’s Covent Garden, is one of the great theatres in every sense of the word. It is home to both the Royal Opera and Royal Ballet companies, and stages major productions in repertoire virtually year round. Because of the flexibility of its stage and facilities, a typical day in the ROH might see an opera company rehearsal during the day, with that set moved out and replaced for a ballet that evening, or even two different opera performances in the same day.

On 29th May 2008 SIS LIVE supported the delivery of a critically acclaimed live advert for Honda, broadcast live on Channel 4. It was described at the time by the Guardian as “the first ever live advert on British television” and featured 45 people sky-diving in formation over Madrid, moving to spell out HONDA, under the tag-line ‘difficult is worth doing.’

As the reality show Big Brother enters its 14th season on the CBS television network, RealNetworks once again relies on iStreamPlanet to provide multi-camera, 24/7, live streaming from the Big Brother house to subscribers of its SuperPass service. The live, online broadcast is a hit with Big Brother fans, providing them a constant stream of entertainment that they can’t get from the TV show. This always-on entertainment pulls viewers deeper into the show and RealNetworks’ community-fueled content.