Relentless innovations by HBS/Lawo enhance Rugby World Cup viewing
For the Rugby World Cup 2023 in France, which started on September 8 and will run until October 28, the sport’s international governing body, has once again sealed a partnership with HBS, with whom German manufacturer Lawo holds a long-standing relationship.
A host broadcaster famous for its pristine productions of global events, HBS is also known for its relentless drive to innovate and for adopting technical innovations as soon as they are proven in operational conditions. The declared goals of both World Rugby and HBS for the Rugby World Cup is to provide unforgettable moments with cutting-edge technology that has a smaller physical – and hence also carbon – footprint of the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) infrastructure installed at tennis’ French Open.
Those goals are being met by a dedicated fibre-optic SMPTE ST2110 network architecture, which has been deployed to connect the arenas in Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Saint-Denis and Saint-Étienne to the IBC.
On-site outside broadcast (OB) trucks at these venues connect to the network via Lawo .edge hyper-density gateways, which are equipped with two processing blades and two rear I/O plates in a hot-spare redundant configuration.
The Lawo.edge units handle all the bi-directional stream traffic between the venues and the IBC over telco Orange’s transport network, and integrate with HBS’ existing IP core infrastructure.
As flexible and advanced technology is essential to ensure everything runs smoothly, HBS decided to take advantage of Lawo’s HOME Apps before their official launch at IBC 2023. The microservice-based HOME Apps run on 1U high standard servers and can be used in the most agile of combinations, while also allowing HBS to save space, weight and energy.
Bart Lucassen, Director of Engineering at HBS, said, “The beauty of the HOME Apps and Lawo.edge is that they are incredibly powerful and integrate seamlessly with our existing IP set-up. They help us deliver on our promise to provide World Rugby with a unique viewing experience here in France.”
