A host broadcaster famous for its pristine productions of global events, HBS is also known for its relentless drive to innovate and for adopting technical innovations as soon as they are proven in operational conditions. The declared goals of both World Rugby and HBS for this event is to provide unforgettable moments with cutting-edge technology that has a smaller physical – and hence also carbon – footprint of the International Broadcast Center infrastructure installed at Roland-Garros, in Paris.

Those goals are being met by a dedicated fiber-optic SMPTE ST2110 network architecture, which has been deployed to connect the arenas in Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Saint-Denis and Saint-Étienne to the (International Broadcast Centre) IBC. On-site OB trucks at these venues connect to the network via Lawo .edge hyper-density gateways, which are equipped with two processing blades and two rear I/O plates in a hot-spare redundant configuration.

The .edge units handle all the bidirectional stream traffic between the venues and the IBC over Orange’s transport network, and integrate seamlessly with HBS’ existing IP core infrastructure.

As flexible and advanced technology is essential to ensure everything runs smoothly, HBS furthermore decided to take advantage of Lawo’s HOME Apps. The microservice-based Apps run on 1U high standard servers and can be used in the most agile of combinations, while also allowing HBS to save space, weight and energy.

The impressive number of IP streams whizzing through France, often back and forth, are controlled by two separate VSM clusters, adding intuitive broadcast control to a unique technological offering.