A Midlands independent TV production company is to unveil a $1 million wireless outside broadcast truck that is tipped to cause a revolution in the coverage of live events.
Hay Fisher Productions, based at Droitwich, has been a major player in televising motor sport events for 30 years. Its new TV truck will enable producers to cover events using digital cameras that send microwave radio frequency (RF) signals live to a receiver antennae mounted 40ft above the outside broadcast vehicle.
Joe Hancox, partner at Midlands accountants and business advisers Horwath Clark Whitehill, who advises Hay Fisher, predicts that the RF wireless OBtruck has the potential to become a market leader for producers relaying pictures to big screens at major events.
Mr Hancox said: “We think our client has achieved something ground-breaking in the technology of television. Its arrival on the market is likely to have a significant influence on how big location events – attended by huge crowds of perhaps more than 25,000 people – are televised in the future using big screens.”
The microwave radio frequency signals from each of the unit’s seven cameras will carry video and two channels of audio ready for immediate mixing by the director inside the truck.
It will also be able to distribute feeds simultaneously, including computer graphic images, and can be operated by a director, operations engineer and graphics technician.
While traditional OB facilities might take as long as two days to rig before an event, the Hay Fisher Wireless OB Truck is designed to be in action transmitting broadcast quality television pictures in about two hours.
Richard Hay, 43-year-old managing director of Hay Fisher Productions, has spent the past 18 months developing the OB truck in liaison with Henry Barczynski, chairman of Gigawave, which manufacture a wide range of RF equipment, and Chris Warden of EtoE, builders of OBfacility trucks.
He said: “The microwave RF wireless cameras give far greater operational flexibility and manoeuvrability.”
