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This summer’s sports broadcasting schedule introduces new possibilities for 5G, a technology that promises to revolutionize production and even the whole broadcast infrastructure.
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While tests, proofs of concept and small-scale activations (such as at fan zones) still dominate, there are a few examples of 5G being used at scale in broadcast production.
Among other benefits 5G is claimed to improve efficiency for live broadcasters by removing the need for large onsite crews and tethered equipment, both in arena venues and remote locations.
According to the GSMA, this approach can help broadcasters lower their production costs by as much as 90%, and could ultimately save the global media industry billions of dollars each year.
The most high-profile current uses of 5G are around the Olympics and the UEFA European soccer championships hosted in Germany.
The Olympic Opening Ceremony along the Seine in Paris will be covered at least in part by cameras connected to bonded cellular links provided by telco Orange.
Details are being kept under wraps to manage security in what will be a packed and wide area. Meanwhile, the Olympic torch is being relayed around France in segments live streamed via a combination of 5G and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network.
France Télévisions is hosting the production of 10 hours of live coverage per day, tracking the torch’s 1625 km journey, traversing various geographical locations with differing levels of network coverage.
The broadcaster’s CTO Fredéric Brochard is on message: “This innovation gives editorial teams the ability to produce more content with greater adaptability and responsiveness, while controlling costs and maintaining the quality standards dear to France Télévisions.”
On the ground, the production makes use of a private 5G bubble “Dome” for content capture and distribution from French start-up Obvios. The Dome device is small enough to be carried and deployed in the trunk of a car.
France Télévisions broadcast engineer Amy Rajaonson explained that they had created a “private 5G bubble” with latency between 50 and 90 MB/s and a bitrate of five 5000 MB/s.”
She said, “In this setup there’s a car following the [torch relay] runners with two antennas on the car roof. One is for the private 5G and the other for Starlink. They bring the camera streams into the cloud hosted by AWS.”
The system used cellular bonding and cloud technology to combine different network connections, dynamically selecting the best one in real-time to ensure optimal signal quality.
Romuald Rat, director of technological innovation and AI at France Télévisions, said, “If we had not produced it like this, we would not have had the capacity to deploy a traditional setup. This kind of setup gives us more opportunities to produce content.”
At the Euros, Deutsche Telekom successfully debuted 5G coverage from fan zones. It set up a 5G campus network for RTL Deutschland, providing customized private facilities which enabled various live broadcasts during the tournament’s opening game. Live 5G reports directly from the fan zone were made possible by its proximity to the network.
Signals were received directly via an integrated SIM card for transmission to the studio with no additional mobile solution needed. The network provided the basis for several parallel data streams with very high bandwidth, the company added.
In addition, an RTL team equipped with two mobile 5G cameras has been working in Cologne, Germany testing different functions via 5G. These — apparently successful — tests included for ultra-low latency live video and audio intercom for direct communication between the control room, the camera operator, and the interviewer. Return video to show the camera operator or interviewer what is being broadcast in real time was also tested, as was remote control of the camera from a central control room.
Ericsson is also out in Germany at the Euros using 5G to “transform fan experiences.” Deutsche Telekom Ericsson supports RTL’s private 5G campus network in Cologne, which spans 35,000-square-meters around RTL Deutschland’s production studios. From there, cameras transmit interviews with fans transmitted in HD.
O2 Telefónica, in partnership with Ericsson, rolled out 5G coverage across ten host cities in Germany for fans with 5G devices and network subscriptions to enjoy better than average mobile connectivity.
At around the same time the Swedish company was involved in a “landmark” trial that marked “a transformative leap in the production and consumption of live sports entertainment in Denmark.”
This was the trial of a live broadcast of a football match in Copenhagen transmitted over telco 3’s 5G standalone network (which is supplied by Ericsson). The proof of concept tested four 5G broadcast cameras and one drone camera, each demanding 35Mbps and 100% uplink time from the network.
“However, enough capacity was provisioned in the stadium to support full arena TV production in the future, supporting many times more 5G cameras to capture the action from a large variety of camera angles,” the partners said in a statement.
Morten Brandstrup, head of News Technology at TV 2, said, “There are many advantages to producing with 5G. Photographers become much more flexible and mobile when everything is done wirelessly. Setting up a camera for sports matches is faster when you don’t have to pull hundreds of meters of cable, and we can use the 5G network that is already there, but now with a completely different security and stability in live production.”
Sony’s 5G-enabled broadcast camera technology were also showcased during the trial. Claus Pfeifer, head of Connected Content Acquisition at Sony Professional Europe, said: “5G-enabled cameras [are] now capable of transmitting high-resolution images wirelessly in real-time. This significant advancement paves the way for new possibilities in live broadcasting, offering viewers more captivating and interactive live content through 5G-powered transmissions.”
In the US, this month T-Mobile continued its 5G sports activations, this time in partnership with the PGA of America at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship. Just like at the Men’s PGA Championship, T-Mobile’s 5G portable private network enabled NBC Sports to add more 5G cameras to more holes for coverage on NBC, Peacock and the GOLF Channel.
5G links were also able to capture real-time player data and tracking, more broadcast views and a “PuttView” augmented reality experience for VIP guests.
Callie Field, president of the T-Mobile Business Group, said, “The ability to bring women’s golf fans more content like real-time scores and shot data, is a game-changer.”
T-Mobile is promoting the operational efficiencies for sports and broadcasters of using 5G in production.
The telecom company says that the data-intensive process to bring fans real-time scoring, shot data and other insights “is typically expensive and requires a lot of labor. But 5G is changing that.”
Ahead of the Championship, its team captured 47GB of data to create a digital twin of the golf course. It said 5G reduced the typical data transfer time by nearly 75%, “making it easier than ever to bring fans this unmatched experience.”
In the past, broadcasters had a hard time bringing more cameras onto the course. Hard-wired cameras needed miles of cables and bandwidth for wireless cameras was limited and didn’t support 4K.
T-Mobile says its 5G private network paired with portable data transmitters and high efficiency coding devices, mean broadcasters like NBC can bring more cameras onto the course and capture more live content in 4K at 60 frames per second. That’s “thanks to superfast data speeds and glass-to-glass latency that averages under 100 milliseconds.”
Meanwhile, Verizon continues to help the NHL deliver coverage from League matches into the AWS cloud for remote centralized production, a workflow it demonstrated at NAB Show in April.
Running on AWS Wavelength Zones, a mobile edge compute service that delivers ultra-low-latency applications for 5G devices, this solution is dubbed “a game-changer” for broadcast, with the speed from content capture on ice to broadcast going from seconds to milliseconds.
“Live cloud production empowers the NHL to produce high-quality content from virtually anywhere and at practically any scale, using the optimum combination of resources,” said Julie Souza, global head of sports at AWS. “The speed of Verizon 5G unlocks new opportunities for the continued adoption and deployment of live cloud production across sports and beyond.”
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