DutchView Relys on MediorNet at Lowlands Festival 2011

For this year’s Lowlands Festival DutchView established a Riedel MediorNet fiber network as signal distribution backbone for the production. Hilversum-based DutchView, technical media partner for recording, processing, storage and distribution of audiovisual content and one of Holland’s largest facility houses for OB trucks, studios and post production suites recorded and broadcasted more than 110 concerts during the three day festival.

MediorNet is a fully synchronized real-time media network supporting any network topology including ring, daisy-chain, star or any combination of these. The system allows routing of any signal in the network to one or even several other points. In addition MediorNet provides integrated broadcast-quality signal processing tools such as embedders/de-embedders, quad-splits, frame store synchronizers and test pattern generators.

“We already had a lot of knowledge and experience related to fiber optic applications, such as point-to-point links or fiber as a replacement for Triax. But at Lowlands we wanted to really raise the bar”, said Dave Nijmeijers, CTO of DutchView. DutchView installed five MediorNet mainframes at the five main stages and the according OB trucks. These were connected via a redundant fiber ring, providing integrated signal transport for video, audio, communications and data between the locations. In addition, MediorNet also transported camera control data between the TOC and the DV4 OB truck as well as Final Cut Pro data between the 3FM radio station and the EVS systems in the TOC. The network’s overall capacity was 15 GBit/s with full redundancy.

“Instead of pulling 20 kilometers of copper cables, we were able to reduce this to 2 kilometers of mainly fiber cable. Also our rigging time was significantly reduced. Instead of finishing at 23.00 we already went home at 18.30”, said Nijmeijers.

DutchView also decided to equip their upcoming new OB trucks with Riedel MediorNet and Riedel Artist intercom systems. “We have chosen MediorNet as the basis of our new OBs. We are convinced that with MediorNet we can provide our customers with more flexibility, shorter set-up times and – at the end of the day – reduced costs. The customers we showed the truck’s concepts to were very impressed with the capabilities and the flexibility of the system”, says Nijmeijers.