October of 2011 saw Mi Broadcast supply and support the Doha Film Institute (DFI), in conjunction with Peter Starling from SayHoo Media, at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival.
Over a 2 week period the DFI hosts its annual film festival, which is open to the public, at the Katara Cultural Village in Doha, Qatar. In those 2 weeks there is the opportunity to come and see up and coming producers, big blockbuster movie releases, live bands and concerts and open Q & A sessions. All this was streamed on the web across the world and shown live around the UAE with the help of the Mi Broadcast Hire and Mi Broadcast Fibre assembly departments.
There were 4 main venues all with a different role for the festival such as the KOAT (Katara Open Air Theatre), the main venue where the big opening/closing ceremonies and live performances from the likes of Leona Lewis were held and Building 16, glamorously hosting four red carpet evenings where Antonio Banderas, Mark Strong, Rob Lowe and Robert De Niro were all in attendance.
Between these venues there was a mixture of pre-installed fibre links and fibre runs, laid out with the help of on-site Mi Broadcast engineer Graham Herridge, to carry the video and audio back to the main MCR. This was then edited and uploaded to the web and uplinked via satellite.
The equipment used to achieve all this was a mixture of five 8 channel HD Pythons, four single channel HD Rattlers, 2 configurable HD ‘Miblink’ racks, a combination of bi-directional audio using Adder 2, Adder 161 and Adder 882 systems and notably an audio snake that solved a dogged audio hum problem from the back to the front of the stage.
Also supplied from our hire stock were some of our 600m lengths of TAC4 singlemode fibre cable terminated with the Delphi connector, and purchased for permanent installation were several 4 and 12 core singlemode fibres with ST connectors on Marcaddy cable reels.
For more information on our products visit the hire page.

For the past couple of years Westfield, with the help of Mi Broadcast, have brought some of the UKs major film premiers, live broadcasts and concerts to the shoppers of the 2 largest urban shopping centres in Europe.
From its opening in 2008 when it was Europe’s largest (until Westfield Stratford City took that record over in 2011) Westfield London has held, with the help of MiB hire, prestigious events such as the Pirates of the Caribbean premier, the Coke Olympic Torch Relay Launch Show, the One Day Film Premier and the Larry Crown Film Premiere.
Using their installed Neutrik DUO infrastructure, typical requirements for the various events have been bi-directional HD and bi-directional audio over several runs such as the central control room to the waiting broadcast trucks and press pits.

In late 2011 the requirements stepped up a notch with the opening of the new 1.45 billion Stratford City, newly crowned the largest urban shopping centre in Europe, the gateway to the Olympic park with its 300 shops and 14 screen cinema.
Using their installed Neutrik singlemode QUAD infrastructure Mi Broadcast supplied kit and cable for the grand opening of Stratford City, the simultaneous Christmas light switch on with Westfield London & Stratford City and more recently the well-publicised Twilight – Breaking Dawn UK premier.
Where the requirement included distributing the 2 film feeds to 15 cinema screens concurrently, linking the press-pen and the outside broadcast area with multiple HD and audio and transporting the cameras on the centre truss to the control room with individual Telecast Rattlers.

In 2010 the Mi Broadcast hire department took on its largest job when it worked in conjunction with SiS Live and their Fibre Systems team headed up by Dan Burbidge.
The task of transporting video and audio signals for the first all HD Commonwealth Games was made more difficult by the well-publicised difficulties faced out in India’s capital, Delhi, as Mi Broadcast engineer Michael Griggs found out during his 3 weeks on location supporting the kit and cable.
The statistics for one of the world’s largest outside broadcast events came in at 17 sport events, 12 competition venues plus the all-important opening and closing ceremony (pictured right) and it was the job of Mi Broadcast to transport the signals from the competition arenas to the local MCRs.
Despite the large stock of Telecast Fiber systems kits Mi Broadcast regularly rents out, the size of the event dictated the number of bespoke kits required. A total of 40 MiB 1U racks were made, venue specific, and contained a total of 98 individual HD links, 40 bi-directional HD links and 20 PAL links for Key, Fill and reference signals. Along with that there were 5x 8 HD channels Pythons kits, 5x 4x4 HD channels python kits, 6 Viper 442 modular video/audio racks and 3 POV camera control systems, all transporting signals ranging from the underground ‘goal cam’ Rattler used at the Netball court to the multiple site requirements of the Athletics arena (pictured left).
On top of all the kit Mi Broadcast also supplied over 46km of singlemode tactical 4 core fibre cable terminated with ST connectors and pulling socks, for use around the venues.
The 134 lengths of 300m and 12 lengths of 500m were sent out in June for early deployment in the venues that were ready.
Dan Burbidge, head of the SIS LIVE Fibre Systems Department, said after the event “Having worked with Mi Broadcast for a number of years we knew they would be up to the challenge of supplying the bespoke systems to meet the demanding requirements of this project. With so many venues involved it was great to have an Mi engineer out in India for the games to help deal with changing requirements and issues as they came up. This was the biggest challenge SIS LIVE OB Fibre Systems have faced to date, and we are proud to have delivered a resoundingly successful service.”