Badger & Combes is a digital media and production company located at MediaCity in Salford, England. What started as a project for media production students to engage the industry with more tangible experiences, became a fully-fledged production company in 2020. Badger & Combes has retained their premiere clients including the prestigious Lancashire Cricket Club, whose home is the Emirates Old Trafford cricket ground.
We spoke with the Managing Director at Badger & Combes, Colin McKevitt, about how Haivision mobile video transmitter solutions helped them power live broadcast coverage of Lancashire Cricket’s pre-season tour across Dubai and Bengaluru, India to a global audience through an IP-based remote production workflow.
Remote broadcasting from India
Tasked to manage a remote production broadcast of Lancashire Cricket’s pre-season tour matches from India, Badger & Combes realized they could leverage Haivision’s live video contribution solutions to bring flexibility to their workflow and save on costs.
“We had challenges with the logistics of what we needed to bring to India and what the costs would be. After working out how many people it would take and how much it would cost to ship out the entire solution in a flight case, we decided that we only needed to take Haivision mobile video transmitters with us and send signals back to a Haivision StreamHub receiver located in England for the whole production.”
Integral to their workflow, Badger & Combes leveraged Haivision Air and Pro mobile video transmitters, and a Haivision StreamHub receiver to transport low latency feeds over IP and cellular networks into their live production workflow. One of the key benefits of powering live broadcasts with Haivision mobile video transmitters is the hitless failover feature, allowing for a smooth transition from a wired IP connection to a cellular network in case of potential failure.
While a small remote team of two traveled to India, the rest of the Badger & Combes broadcast production remained in England at the home stadium of the Lancashire Cricket, the Emirates Old Trafford. At the stadium broadcast center were commentators, analysts, a director, replay team, and the postproduction staff. In India, the remote team was located on-site sending high-quality live feeds to England for broadcast on the LancsTV streaming channel as well as on the JioTV app in India, one of the largest content aggregators in the country with over 1,000 channels from more than 200 broadcasters in over 16 languages to a subscriber base of over 460 million.
In India at the cricket field, Haivision Air cellular video transmitters were dedicated to transmitting the clean program feed of the matches, and one of the Pro transmitters was used to send a multi-camera view of the different angles of the game. One camera, outfitted with the Haivision Pro transmitter, was used as a dedicated ball tracker feed. All the return feeds from India were sent by the Haivision Air units to a StreamHub receiver so the commentary and postproduction team in England could see them all at once.
“The commentary team back in the Emirates Old Trafford cricket ground in England could see all the action and comment on it in real-time,” revealed Colin. “In addition, the production team was able to manage the postproduction including the addition of graphics and teeing up replays for the commentators to discuss on air. The return path of these produced streams was sent back to the JioTV app using the Haivision Pro.”
The Haivision difference
As one can expect when using an IP-based remote production workflow, challenges did come up, but thanks to the robust features of Haivision’s mobile video solutions, they were easily overcome.
“Being out in a rural area of Bangalore, there were some issues that we couldn’t prepare for, especially when it came to network connectivity. We lost connection with the internet at times but because of the hitless failover feature of the Haivision mobile transmitters and SIM cards, viewers at home did not even notice when the signal dropped.”
As the cricket season rolls on, Badger & Combes are extremely happy with the performance of the Haivision solutions and the flexibility they have provided the live production team. They continue to rely on them for cricket games and other live events with their growing client base of sports organizations.
“Haivision solutions allow us to be competitive on a commercial level while delivering high-quality broadcast video at a cost-effective price. The strength and adaptability of the devices enables us to think outside the box and do things we didn’t think we could. All we need are the Haivision mobile video transmitters with StreamHub at the center of it,” says Colin. “Without the Haivision kit, this production would have been too expensive and time and resource prohibitive. We have all this talent at Badger & Combes with a digitally creative mindset and Haivision technology allows us to explore that creativity and push the boundaries of what can be done in broadcast.”
