Creative Technology UK migrates to IP with RTS intercoms – AV Magazine

By AV Magazine in Support Systems, UK&I November 30, 2022 0
CT UK is investing in the ST-2110 platform as it moves to an IP-based model, with this summer’s Commonwealth Games providing the first major outing for its investment.
The UK arm of Creative Technology has invested in intercoms equipment from RTS as it moves to an IP-based model.
Sid Lobb, head of vision and integrated networks at Creative Technology, said: “We’re making a big investment in IP this year and are looking at the next generation of signal distribution – and we have chosen the ST-2110 as a platform for that. It’s part of a direction of investment that is heavily biased towards IP.”
The NEP Group, Creative Technology’s parent company, has a large inventory of RTS equipment in the US, which was found to be extremely flexible during the Covid lockdowns.
“From our experiences over the pandemic, particularly with large virtual contribution TV shows and conferences with massive amounts of IFBs and returns and everything else, the Dante workflow that comes as part of OMNEO with RTS was a key enabler for us, being so flexible in pulling in lots of virtual contributions,” said Lobb. “When we were looking at what we were going to do during our summer deliveries, and what we needed to invest in, RTS came out as a clear winner in terms of flexibility, and also in terms of group consistency.
“The NEP Group has a massive inventory of RTS kit. A lot is built into facilities, but there’s also a fair amount – particularly in the US – that can be rented out for large events, allowing us to scale up as needed. We wanted to create a similar kind of inventory that will be Europe-based, to support the rest of the group when they are delivering large events.”
Lobb added: “We have a number of ODIN matrices and we initially bought them with 16 ports, because we needed small matrices in different modules. However, when our requirements increased, the licensing option made it easy to upgrade from 16 to 32 or 48 ports – all in the same hardware platform. In addition, there are considerations such as additional redundancy – it’s a direction we’re already taking with both our video and our audio distribution, and now comms is being interwoven into that, because it’s such an integral part of every show we do.
“The new Digital Beltpack is a big thing for us. It can serve as a simple four-channel beltpack in partyline mode or used as what is essentially a four-channel matrix panel. It can be connected to a PoE switch allowing up to six to be daisy-chained together. That functionality – in that form factor – is really useful.”
Creative Technology is also benefiting from RTS’s RVON (RTS Voice Over Network) – a proprietary VoIP technology for RTS intercoms that uses standard Ethernet, allowing users to communicate globally over the internet with no distance limitations or latency issues.
CT Group’s Dallas McIntosh said: “We hadn’t used RVON heavily in the past, but recently, it has been a problem-solver. There were issues with the network at a recent location meaning that we didn’t have enough ports available to work with OMNEO. Then I remembered that I had 16 channels I could use on a matrix equipped with RVON cards. That was a real eye-opener and I’m now an advocate of RVON.”
The first major use for the new investment came at this summer’s Commonwealth Games. “We provided an ST-2110-based IP infrastructure for all signal distribution,” said Lobb. “This is something that we’ve been investing in for a while now and we were looking for a comms system that could piggyback on to that infrastructure and investment. The fact that we can now link together all the different nodes around a venue and have matrix-level comms interfacing with the broadcast is important. We designed an ST-2110 network that we had full control over and transported most of the media requirements around venues.”
He added: “The flexible ecosystem is so useful in rental. The different form-factors, the four-channel beltpack, the 1U 16 panels and the 2U 32 panels are all really useful. But then you add in the commentary panels that all work natively with OMNEO. It’s a powerful offering for an ecosystem of products.”
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