Snell today announced that EMAV, one of Portugal’s leading production companies,
has installed a Vega routing platform in one of its midsize outside broadcast (OB)
vans in order to maximise routing capacity and flexibility.
Vega is positioned as the industry’s most flexible asymmetric routing solution in a 4RU
192-port chassis and allows the EMAV OB production team to configure any signal
port independently for fiber or coax (copper) connectivity, and to configure any
signal port as either an input or output. The system was supplied and installed via
Snell’s Portuguese channel partner, Amperel.
“Snell’s Vega platform gives us a great deal more flexibility in routing configuration
and fiber/coax connectivity, in turn enabling our staff to meet even the most
complex customer requirements,” said Miguel Amorim, technical director at EMAV.
“We can add only the fibre connections we need, with different ‘flavors’ of
wavelength, thus making the most of our I/O ports. The ability to increase our
routing capacity without the higher costs and space demands of conventional
routing solutions gives us a critical competitive advantage in the OB marketplace. We
also benefit from the reliability of Snell equipment and the availability of support
throughout Europe.”
With services based in Portugal and expanding across Europe, EMAV can send its OB
vans to cover a wide range of live events, ranging from sports to cultural and
political events. The company’s skilled operators and technical engineers already
work with Snell’s Kahuna multi-format production system, IQ Modular infrastructure,
and RollPod control panel in meeting the exacting demands of EMAV clients. The
addition of the Vega routing platform and complementary Luna panels, both
integrated with the OB unit’s RollCall control and configuration software, enables the
team to employ ports most cost-effectively according to the demands of any given
application.
The fully asymmetric I/O port designation of the high-density Vega routing platform
enables EMAV to configure the router with just one input and 191 outputs, 191
inputs and one output, or any combination in between. The system leverages
proprietary algorithms to monitor every subassembly continuously. To ensure
maximum redundancy, it offers a full range of options — dual crosspoints, dual
controllers, dual power supplies, and dual fans — all of which are hot-pluggable or
replaceable. Each pair of ports consists of a receptacle cage that accepts a very
small plug-in module supporting either fibre (LC-type small form-factor pluggable or
SFP) or copper coaxial (HD BNC) connectivity.
Vega’s ports can be configured simply and quickly, so EMAV operators can choose
the appropriate connection medium on the fly. Convenient support for fiber
connectivity without the need for external converters makes it easy and affordable
to maintain high data rates over long-distance links. The Luna LCD panels installed
along with the routing platform feature a rotary encoder control knob for user-
friendly “paging.”
