Russian satellite broadcaster NTV-Plus has added six Calrec consoles to its Moscow facility, providing a network of ten consoles linked via Calrec’s Hydra2 networking system – making the installation the largest Hydra2 network in the world.
Located at the Television Technical Centre Ostankino, NTV-Plus uses the consoles for mixing live sports shows, talk shows, and news production. In the latest deployment, NTV-Plus installed two Artemis Light consoles in its Sports 1 and Sports 3 studios and four Artemis Beam consoles in its new remote transmission studio complex, where they were first used during the Winter Games in Sochi.
‘The Hydra2 network is especially useful in a large multistudio installation like ours, where we handle many complex live productions, including world-renowned sports programs. Now we have even more I/O to draw from. Hydra2 gives us unlimited flexibility in tackling any kind of task or broadcast requirement,’ says NTV-Plus CTO, Oleg Kolesnikov. ‘Besides that, all of the Calrec consoles have full redundancy, from the input ports to the faders, and Calrec’s Bluefin2 DSP has proved its reliability and good sound quality time after time.’
Together with the satellite provider’s existing Calrec consoles, the newest six consoles are networked via a central Hydra2 router, which NTV-Plus installed in 2013 so that it could expand the network in the future. The Hydra2 system maximises flexibility, allowing any console to access any I/O on the network.
Hydra2 is also a management tool that provides network-wide control of many consoleparameters. Broadcasters can remotely configure mic gain, phantom power, patching, port protection, alias files, virtual patchbays, and access rights. This added benefit not only streamlines the workflow to make set-up configuration quicker and more efficient, but also allows the broadcaster to maximise productivity.
‘NTV-Plus was our first customer in Russia, and with nearly one million subscribers, it is a significant force in the Russian media landscape, especially when it comes to live sports production,’ says Calrec European Sales Manager, Michael Reddick. ‘Apart from moving signals around, Hydra2 lets NTV-Plus control and manage more of its network from any one of its consoles. That means operators have unmatched networking capability and I/O access at their fingertips, which is a powerful benefit in live, real-time operations.’
More: www.calrec.com
