RTE represented Ireland at the recent Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, with the public broadcaster providing audio coverage for its Irish listeners.
The broadcaster produced 16 channels of audio commentary through fully equipped commentary positions that were channeled through eight AEQ Phoenix VENUS IP audio codecs.
Four of the AEQ codecs were located at RTE’s installations in Dublin, with the remaining four at the International Broadcast Center in Rio. With the ControlPhoenix management software application RTE had full control over both sets of codecs on the same computer. Each AEQ Phoenix VENUS is capable of establishing four simultaneous bi-directional mono channels to two different destinations so the 16 channels of audio commentary fit into the four units at each end.
“The reliability of the communication link is excellent and we have not had to go to any of our resilience systems using ISDN back-up for the duration of the games,” said RTE’s Tom Nugent. “The only concern we had initially was the fact that the units do not have a physical control but relies 100 percent on a software control. Nonetheless, it becomes clear to one after a while that the software control is only adding flexibility to the system and we can have several computers connected to the same system for reasons of redundancy.”
RTE is planning on using the AEQ systems to help cover the Paralympics that will also take place in Rio in September.
