Get your wings.

SIVision’s unique HD OB truck equipped with Lawo's mc²66.

Zoooooom... the plane dives at max speed... it’s intercepted... makes a sharp turn... shoots through the last two pylons... and reaches the finishing line. The Red Bull Air Race is an extreme race: single-engined propeller aircraft perform with around 350 horsepower; and speeds of 250 mph are not unheard of. During the spectacular manoeuvres through closely positioned ‘air gates’, the pilots experience acceleration forces of up to 10 g. Often there are only few inches between the plane wings and the inflatable pylons, and brief contact is not uncommon.

SIVision’s new HD OB truck (based in Munich, Germany) also stretched its wings during a successful trial by fire at the Red Bull Air Race in Budapest on 20^th August. The truck’s conceptual design and internal layout are – at least in Germany – unique: the trailer, with three steerable axles, can be expanded on either side by one single and one double movable sidewall, increasing the width to 5.60 metres. Up to 20 workplaces are available within the truck once it’s in its working position; two of these are in the sound control room.

The standard: a Lawo mc²66

When specifying equipment for the sound control room, only one mixing console came up for SIVision’s consideration – the mc²66 from Lawo. For Imre Sereg, SIVision’s owner and CEO, two factors were of vital importance: the operating philosophy and system reliability. Sereg states: “Working with the mc²66 is fast and intuitive. The redundant router board in the mc²66 HD core contributes to a level of reliability that is imperative in live broadcasting. Besides, the Lawo mc²66 is widely used in the OB truck arena, and has even achieved an ‘industry standard’ status”.

SIVision’s mc²66 is fitted with 56 faders in a 24-8-24 frame. It has 192 DSP channels and the router cards each provide 8192 crosspoints. 20 MADI ports and 128 AES inputs and outputs are available for external interfaces. Three stageboxes allow the direct connection of audio data via optical fibre – “an important precondition for HD work as it spares a further connection”, explains Imre Sereg. And he points out the superb range of video equipment in the OB truck, including 24 Sony cameras (two of them with Super SloMo), Sony monitors, Sony video consoles and a Harris video router. The 40-ton truck is packed with the finest technology in all respects but, thanks to its unique internal layout, it still offers sufficient space for the entire team – from technician to director.


About SIVision
Just in time for the start of the Air Race World Series 2008, the TV production company SIVision TV Production GmbH received a high accolade: the broadcast quality of the spectacular race series brought the US TV partner Fox Sports Network (FSN) a nomination at the 29^th Annual Sports Emmy Awards, the ‘Oscar’ of sports TV programmes.

Since the second event in Budapest on 20^th August 2004, the Red Bull Air Race has been produced in High Definition by Imre Sereg, owner and CEO of SIVision. In 2007, more than 500 million TV viewers watched ten races on four continents.

This year, in addition to the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, SIVision will cover further exciting and interesting productions in HD, such as a concert in the Munich Olympic Hall for their DVD by pop band ‘Rosenstolz”. For events outside Europe – as in a concert by ‘The Police’ in Buenos Aires in November 2007 – SIVision uses a range of flightcased equipment; in Europe they employ the new HD OB truck.