BT Tower

Whilst not requiring tuning, it is possible that you will have more potential ASI sources than MPEG2/H264/H265 decoders I guess - so there may still be some ASI-domain routing? I guess that will depend on utilisation and systems design? As an ASI stream could be carrying MPEG2 (though I guess this is rarer), H264 or H265 video in either 4:2:0 or 4:2:2 I guess you may need to route the streams to different decoders based on the content?

(ASI is a standard for carrying an MPEG2 transport stream - and can include carrying it over SDI-type infrastructure)

I imagine with the amount of feeds they handle they may not appear on the multiviewer or it’s so small you can’t really see it (like a 4x4 arrangement per screen). Probably the feeds that are big events and the ones the software has deemed to have errors appear infront of the operators.

Shame you can’t get Studio satellite feeds you do occasionally but it’s very rare now maybe I need to work here though I’d get to see tons

How come the NBC Today studio output and autocue gets fed to Europe? That’s always confused me.

Because the show is still directed and vision mixed in New York?
Last time I was in New York in 2009 I found myself at 30 Rock looking into the Today show studio during the NBC Nighty News.
That edition was being presented from London, and they kept the feed from the studio/pres point during the vt packages, and Brian Williams autocue was scrolling as he was reading it on one of the 1B cameras.
So even the autocue is written and operated from NBC News and fed to wherever in the world the presenter is.

They must be using low latency feeds (IP and/or fibre) for both the autocue reverse vision feed and the camera feed from London not to be the victim of horrible latency issues. (You could mitigate the camera feed latency by sourcing early audio for the prompt operator)

Well, after the 'anorak heartbeat raising surge' moment of actually seeing something of interest during the studio 1B downtime, instead of watching some bored scene shifters wandering around the place, I noticed watching both the under camera monitor feed from NBC London and the autocue, that Brian was in complete sync with it.

I believe it's how they ran the Today show during the Olympic games from Stratford, with autocue and directing/VM'ing from New York with everything being firbered under the Atlantic - despite galleries in the IBC about 2 minutes walk away from the temporary studio.

One Today Show staffer told me that during Rio every single camera was backhauled via fiber to New York where the show was vision mixed. What was also impressive was during the political conventions about 20 cameras were uplinked via satellite to NYC where it was mixed and everything was in perfect sync. I am not sure how the other networks were handled but NBC’s feed was usually ahead of the others.

Also Today comes from Studio 1A. The first two hours of Today and Nightly News share the same control room accross the street at 10 Rockefeller Plaza. The third and fourth hour comes from a seperate control room (I think they use the one for Late Night with Seth Meyers - all the galleries in 30 Rock are designed to be the same or similar) within 30 Rock. The secondary control room is used so Today can update for the west coast feeds live using the primary. In the event of breaking news the third and fourth hours can continue taping and not be interrupted. So say a short special report went out at 9:30 ET during Megyn Kelly’s Show it wouldn’t appear to be interrupted for the CT, MT and PT feeds.




I imagine so they don’t need a seperate staffer in London (or wherever else) to run the autocue remotely. NBC appears to have a lot of satellite space accross the US and Europe. Maybe for convenience it’s easier to leave the feeds up and running.

I believe that was also the case in Beijing in 2008. All cameras fibred back to the US where the show was cut as normal. Doing it over fibre is non-trivial, but avoids most latency issues.

A number of broadcasters did their main Olympic presentation this way in 2012 - with control rooms cutting between remote camera feeds in control rooms back home. Some also did remote camera control (i.e. black level, exposure, colour balance shading etc.) at base. Over fibre you can get full tallies, data etc. and if you want to use prompt (though Olympic sport shows probably don't need or use it) you can do that remotely. Latency is just a couple of frames at most if you do it right.

Doing the same via satellite is trickier - as you will inevitably have higher latencies - and that can give you issues with delayed talkback, implementing tallies (if that is done) etc. It's impressive to get all cameras in sync perfectly - I guess you have to run the same encoders and decoders at both ends, probably in low latency mode.