The new vehicles were designed jointly with NDR and built by the Grass Valley systems group in Weiterstadt. The technical design uses Grass Valley cameras and routing systems. The outside-broadcast truck is a compact vehicle measuring 12 metres long and 2.5 metres wide, with a side extension 6 metres long and 1.3 metres wide. It supports as many as ten cameras. Grass Valley supplied six LDK 500 cameras with the truck, two of which can operate wirelessly. A 256 × 256 Trinix router handles signal routing.
The support vehicle contains a complete postproduction unit with VTRs and video and audio servers. A 128 × 128 Grass Valley Concerto router completes the system. Equipment from other manufacturers is integrated into the vehicles to meet NDR’s outside-broadcast requirements.
The outside-broadcast truck will cover music and entertainment productions as well as sport. NDR therefore specified demanding acoustic performance, particularly isolation between working areas. Grass Valley said the completed system exceeded those requirements.
The outside-broadcast truck and support vehicle were delivered in December 2006 and entered service officially in February 2007 after intensive testing.
