The New York Giants have installed an HD video fiber circuit from the football franchise’s new training center in East Rutherford, New Jersey, to Azzurro HD’s all-digital ASI, SDI, and HD video switching facility in “The Hub” at 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York.

The new training facility is located just west of the stadium and occupies 199,000 square feet on a 20-acre campus. The dedicated, un-compressed HD video fiber circuit is being used to transmit interviews, live shots, and press conferences from the facility’s nine meeting rooms and auditorium to Azzurro HD’s New York switching center. There the feed can be sent to any local or national broadcaster.

Don Sperling, VP and executive producer of the New York Giants, says that Azzurro’s quality was a driving factor in the decision to utilize the fiber circuit and two-way service. “We were also impressed that they are an all-digital facility that is HD enabled,” he adds.

It’s easy to qualify the ROI on this technology for the Giants, Sterling says, as it provides myriad opportunities for team players in the public relations arena. Networks like Fox, ESPN, and CBS, indeed all the local and national networks, can do two-way talks and interviews with Giants stars. “They don’t have to come here and set up a satellite truck,” Sperling explains. “The costs savings for them, and also really the ease of effort on our part, really makes a lot sense for both parties.”

“Let’s say they want to do an interview with Eli Manning,” he continues, “we can sit Eli down in the studio, and we can route through the fiber the two-way interview through our control room into the studio. Eli can interview with someone in Bristol, CT, or Los Angeles, or wherever they need to be routed out, because we have fiber going in and out of here into New York and through Azzurro. He says that in terms of ROI, it’s obvious. It is a much lesser charge for a network because they don’t have to send additional staff and trucks to Rutherford. It’s a cost savings for everybody, and it also makes the Giants players more available to international media and fans. “[Networks] are more likely to interview our players, and get them on the air,” he says.

Clearly, the HD switching technology is sophisticated, but, is it too complicated for the entire technical staff to operate in case of an emergency?

”We usually have so many people on-hand, like a facilities person, or a camera person, or even a producer. All they have to do is take a quick look and learn how it’s routed in and out. The training center has HD cards now, everything is in HD, so the fiber runs from there to their new stadium and back. It also goes from here to and from New York’s HD switcher; Azzuro can route it anywhere they want. It’s really very easy to use,” he says.

What if the system goes down? Is the tech department deputized to repair it, or do they rely on the fiber circuit manufacturer to troubleshoot? Sperling says that if something catastrophic were to happen, he’s confident that Azzurro would quickly solve the problem. “We are not too worried. And if it happens while someone is in the middle of an interview, then we would lose that, but I think that in a short time we’d have the problem fixed or solved.”

There is also little impact on the network, since the switch comes through a separate line. With a dedicated line, it was designed to have little to no impact.

Some football franchises, because they’re headquartered in stadiums with transmission support, utilize similar fiber systems as the Giants training center. But at a training facility like the East Rutherford location, with offices, studios and locker rooms, it is a benefit to offer two-way communication. “I don’t think there are that many teams that have that fiber in and out of their training facility,” Sperling concludes. Because the switching facility is all-digital ASI, SDI, and HD, it gives the Giants a quantifiable technological edge. “[This system] also helps us because we have a lot of programs that we provide for FiOS, our local provider, Verizon, and we’re able to fiber transmit all of our programming, either live or on tape, to them. This gives us the chance to do a lot of live programming.”

Each new football or baseball stadium brings not only the excitement of a new chapter in the team’s history, but also new opportunities to save energy and promote sustainable building. Sustainable stadiums are becoming a reality in the new millennium; team owners, architects, and engineers are joining forces to re-think the ecological impact of concrete, steel, and asphalt.

According to Sustainable Industries, the first sports team project to earn certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) was not a stadium, but a $34 million training facility and administrative headquarters for the Detroit Lions in Allen Park, Michigan, designed by Gensler, a San Francisco-based architecture firm. The building includes bamboo flooring, nontoxic building materials, and daylighting. The training field is surfaced with FieldTurf, a synthetic turf with backing made from recycled tires and athletic shoes. The project team made efforts to preserve surrounding wetlands.Medlar Field at Lubrano Park, a $30 million, 5,400-seat baseball stadium on the Penn State campus in State College, Pennsylvania, has the distinction of being the first ballpark ever to earn LEED certification. Highlights include waterefficient landscaping, a 76 percent construction waste recycling rate, and power provided in part by a wind turbine system.Now the New York Jets and New York Giants will be playing in one of the greenest venues in sports, thanks to a partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). EPA and the New Meadowlands Stadium Company, the stadium’s principal owner, agreed to incorporate environmentally-friendly materials and practices into the construction and operation of New Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.”The New Meadowlands Stadium will be one of the greenest stadiums in American professional sports,” said EPA Acting Regional Administrator George Pavlou.

Laura Esposito is an AV Technology editorial intern.

NY GIANTS: giants.com
AZZURO: azzuroHD.com
VERIZON FiOS: verizon.com/fios