dB Broadcast Begins BBC Wales Project

dB Broadcast has commenced work on a new state-of-the-art broadcast facility for BBC Wales.

The project will deliver the television and media facilities at a new building in central Cardiff which will be used by BBC Cymru Wales. It will also be the first BBC facility to use IP technology across both its production and broadcast operations.

The building will be home to a number of TV studios and media production facilities, as well as radio, which forms a separate project. Following a competitive tendering process, db Broadcast won the integration project with work completed in 2019. dBBroadcast and BBC Wales will work alongside Grass Valley on the implementation of the Live IP system.

The project includes four workstreams: Broadcast Infrastructure, Media Production, TV Studios and TV Playout. The BBC Wales project is adopting an IP core for signal routing based on the SMPTE 2110 standards and AMWA/NMOS for Control.

"This new centre will give us a greater level of creative freedom than we've ever had before," said Gareth Powell, Chief Operating Officer of BBC Wales. "We want to harness the benefits of IP technology to provide the best possible tools to our content makers, and to free them from many of the historical constraints we've faced at our current HQ."

Tom Swan, Sales & Marketing Director of dB Broadcast, added: "dB is at the forefront of the industry transition to the use of IP in live, uncompressed video and audio systems. We have already delivered several large systems based on current or precursor standards such as ASPEN, Dante and SMPTE 2022."

The new broadcast centre for BBC Wales will have space for around 1,200 staff, and the new technology deployed is able to adapt quickly to new video formats, higher bandwidth or better video resolution. It also offers simpler production for multiple and new platforms, with less time wasted converting between different video or audio formats.

www.dbbroadcast.co.uk

(JP/MH)