How many HD mobile trucks now available? - Page 3

I don't think you have 6HDX covered - Mountain Mobile Television - in Denver (part of Mobile TV Group).

http://www.lonestarmobiletv.com/mtg_..._6dx_gear.html

That's a retrofit of 6DX..good truck

Jan 14, 2005 8:00 AM, Sports Technology Update

NEP Broadcasting has agreed to purchase HD and SD teleproduction assets and contracts to provide teleproduction facilities for broadcast of several national sports events from National Mobile Television (NMT).

NEP, which is a general partner of NEP Supershooters, and NMT are two of the nation's biggest providers of remote teleproduction facilities for the sports and entertainment industries.

The contracts include an exclusive agreement with ABC Sports to facilitate Monday Night Football, college football, golf and other sports broadcasts; an agreement with FOX to provide facilities for its NFL B and C game broadcasts; and a contract with ESPN to use one HD mobile unit.

NEP also will acquire three HD mobile units NMT's HD4, HD7 and HD8 used to support these agreements and certain other SD operations and mobile units in Hawaii as well as related support units and tractors.

Most of the NMT employees who act as the dedicated crew on each of these mobile units are expected to make the transition to NEP, which will provide continuity of expertise and know-how for each specific truck.

The agreement will make NEP Supershooters the exclusive provider of television production facilities and services to ABC and expand the company's existing relationships with FOX and ESPN.

According to NMT CEP Mark Howorth, proceeds of the transaction will be used to expand the company's regional sports business and position it for growth in the future.

NMT will increase its focus on regional sports networks in all markets, particularly in New York, Florida, Boston, St. Louis, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to the company. Its locations across the country are well-positioned to serve the Rainbow Regional Sports Networks, FOX Sports Net, New England Sports Network and new broadcasters like iNDEMAND and CSTV, he said.

To provide additional service for the regional sports networks, NMT is building the first of five new HD mobile units scheduled to debut in 2005. The first is slated for use in the San Francisco area in April.

The closing of the transaction between NEP and NMT is expected next month, according to the companies.

Sports technology update

http://broadcastengineering.com/news...rts/20050114/#

More HD truck building and retro-fitting SD trucks to HD capacity...

Venue Services Group, Inc. (VSG) Moves to New, 12,000 Square Foot Facility:

Moonachie, NJ: Venue Services Group, Inc. (VSG) continues their corporate expansion with the relocation to a 12,000 sq. ft. facility. The new building offers a centralized east coast base, minutes from New York City. VSG is a national systems integration firm that provides engineering, design and installation of television facilities and mobile production trucks. The new corporate headquarters will provide enough space for in-house mobile production truck construction, system pre-integration, design, engineering and fabrication.

VSG's new facility helps position us as one of the leading systems integrators in the business, says company President Dave Shaw. In addition, we now have the flexibility to build, upgrade or service up to four mobile units at once on the east coast adding to our capabilities in Seattle and Los Angeles. As the broadcast industry continues the transition to HDTV, we have both the staff capability and now the physical space to upgrade multiple mobile units in one location. Our new location, which includes its own wood and metal fabrication shop, gives us the opportunity to work on multiple jobs simultaneously.

This announcement comes only months after the opening of VSG's Northwest Office in Redmond, WA. With our expanded nationwide presence and our growing roster of diverse projects we're able to lead the charge toward HDTV not only for mobile units, but also in fixed facilities, landmark sporting arenas, and the development of broadcast quality infrastructure at Houses of Worship and corporate conference rooms, Shaw notes.

VSG's recent projects include HD mobile unit construction of National Mobile Television's HD7 and HD8; fixed facilities of Arrowhead Pond's arena control room and Free Chapel Worship Center sanctuary; cabling infrastructures at Fenway Park and Fleet Center; conference rooms at Microsoft and the Port of Tacoma, and consulting jobs for The Lightship Group and Fox Sports Net Chicago.

About VSG
Venue Services Group, Inc. (VSG) is a wholly owned subsidiary of National Mobile Television. VSG is a systems integration, engineering, design and consulting firm with extensive experience in the television broadcast industry, concentrating heavily on High Definition Television (HDTV). VSG is specifically experienced in every facet of systems integration, including: building new HDTV mobile units; retro-fitting older trucks to become ready for HDTV broadcasting; laying new cable or re-cabling, for stadiums and arenas; designing new, or re-designing, in-house television control rooms; consulting with television groups, arenas, stadiums and teams on the newest television technology; as well as designing and maintaining high-end audio and visual conference rooms. For more information on VSG, visit www.vsg.tv.

What, they bought the auto dealership next door...? Hey, I used to spend some time out there....lol.
George

NMT's HD10 will roll out in April per here....

http://www.nmtv.com/

10HDX (Western Mobile) is going to roll in May '05 per here:

http://broadcastengineering.com/news...e-tv-20050325/

TNT...

"It converted an existing studio to handle the NBA HD telecasts and associated studio shows last year. Turner bought one HD mobile truck in 2004 and we're just about to go online with a second mobile HD unit that we will own and operate, he says."

per here...

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hreadid=526598

thall85, I know you have two trucks currently listed for TNT. I wonder if they sold one??

New truck for Lyon Video?


Lyon Video

don't forget about the New Sony HD truck that was shown during CES show this year

NCP IV is HD now, no? Maybe not full HD?

http://www.ncpvideo.com/truck-frameset.html

The web page for NCP IV was updated on 4-25-2005 so maybe it's a recently completed conversion.

NMT has a new HD truck page on their web site - truck is SBS1.

http://www.nmtv.com/facilities/fac_equipment.asp?ID=91

Ahhhhh......... SBS stands for Side-By-Side? Sounds more like a B unit to me.

No, this is a unit for putting people out of work. The way I read this is that This truck will be able to take the camera signals from the primary feed truck into it's video switcher and the director can then call his show using the other feeds camera's. For the past few years the fox refgional have been trying something called the clean feed split in which the visiting team takes a feed of the home team's show without the graphics and many of the effects, and then has one camera and one tape machine to cover shots and effects from the home team feed. It has met with much resistance around the country fron remote technicians, but there's not much one can do about it. This concept just takes it one step further by giving the director more control over the shot's he chooses.

Typically, in remote production an "A" unit houses the main control room, audio and video. The "B" unit typically houses graphics and vidoetape, or sometimes is just a rolling maintanence and storage unit.

Fran

Sounds like the concept the Beeb have used since the early 90s. Their Type 8 standard definition units had two vision mixer crates, allowing a second truck with just a sound desk, duplicate monitor stack, some talkback and second vision mixer panel to access the same sources - to either create a second mix for other broadcasters, a unilateral mix as well as a pool/core feed, a screen mix etc.

Rather than send two trucks, with two sets of vision engineers, two sets of VT operators etc. you can share. In some cases this makes economic sense, in other cases you're still better off with two trucks.

(It also guaranteed a degree of redundancy)

Feel sorry for those guys

Not to be argumentative, but wouldn't trucks like that have a place right now helping RSN's get HD away games as a stop gap measure until there ae enough all HD trucks and cameras, wiring etc at the venues to provide both teams their own HD.
Serious question- curious to hear the answer.

I also don't understand how the second truck's director can really run the boat- doesn't the first director talk to the camera people and tell them what HE wants? Won't the second truck just be picking up scraps that the first director leaves around?

I could imagine that opposing RSN's in particular might want much different shots of the same events. For examples do Red Sox fans want to watch 12 camera angles following Jeter after he makes a great play rather then maybe a dugout shot of their team? (Sorry for the week example- put hopefully you ge the gist)

I get to work the maiden voyage of SBS1 on Monday in San Francisco for Pirates baseball. We'll be taking a share from Bay Area to send back to Pittsburgh, we'll add our own announcers, graphics, a couple of camera angles, etc. We are currently in Houston doing the same thing, but it's all in one truck. Michael, it's not really getting scraps from the other show. They care enough to make sure we don't get hung out to dry when taking a share, and we do the same when we do it at home. Also, as I said earlier, we have a couple of cameras so if our announcers are talking about something specific the home show isn't showing, we can put it up quickly.
I'll try to post more on Tuesday to let you guys know how it went. If someone can email me f they see this thread to remind me if I've not done so yet, please feel free.
And Fran, hi there! See you at Wrigley in July!

thanks for the information.

THat's pretty grownup and wise that the home team doesnt hang out the visiting team's TV folks. Kind of an anomaly in this day and age for something of competitors to help each other out.

Nice to hear.

Honestly, not a matter of being grown up...those of us who travel from city to city doing these shows know the other crews well and we're all friends. We're also professionals who realize no matter your feelings about these dual feeds (I'm not the biggest fan of them because of logistics when you are the 2nd show in those trucks, but it's what we are given, so you make the best of it), you still are getting paid and you do your best to provde a quality product. I don't care if 100 or 100,000 people are watching, you still give 100%. Have I thrown out enough cliches for you?

I am new to this thread and scanned it quickly, but unless I missed something, one very prominent mobile unit is missing from the list.
NEP/Denali's "Silver" was upgraded to HD a year ago and this February reclaimed its place as the mobile unit of the Academy Awards.