IVC Media at Wimbledon
IVC Media provided real time motion video over cat. 5 structured cabling, and a multimedia management and distribution solution.
As a major international sporting venue, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (Wimbledon) wanted to ensure that it provided the most modern communications facilities of any sporting complex for broadcasters and media personnel, to enhance the quality of coverage to the millions of viewers worldwide.
As well as a major investment in the new broadcast centre, the club wanted to install an advanced integrated network carrying voice, data and video to provide communications facilities that heralds the start of the new millennium at Wimbledon.
Working closely with the club, and IBM, IVC Media's solution was to provide the Cabletime Mediastar system to manage and distribute all of the real time motion video services over category 5 structured cabling.
Over 60 channels of television are distributed throughout the complex to commentators, media personnel, and journalists, allowing them to view the action from all 18 courts as well as comprehensive statistics from terrestrial and satellite services.
The system also interfaces with the IBM championship information system running to multimedia information PCs and providing feeds to TVs in hospitality suites, as well as the very popular large screen video display.
The concept is an RF switching based around UTP network hubs, delivering full motion video and audio signals over UTP/ScTP (twisted pair) cabling to both TVs and PCs.
In addition to distributing real time motion video, the customised software allows sophisticated provision of national/international video conferencing, user group viewing, forced messaging, subscriber billing, and user log on/log off facilities.
