ALEXANDRA PALACE WDC 2020

The 2019 PDC calendar comes to an end this month as the William Hill World Darts Championship starts. It’s the sport’s biggest tournament of the year with over 80,000 fans expected to attend as players compete for the combined 2.5-million-pound prize fund. 

Collectv Engineers have been working hard on our systems since the kit returned from Wolverhampton, preparing them for Sky Sports and the 22 days of non-stop coverage that will be broadcast on a dedicated Sky Sports Darts channel.

Ally Pally is a World Championship so will be a 50P event meaning double the data on both temporary and permanent storage across the network. Our system has been designed with this in mind.

After 2 Days of rigging at Alexandra Palace our Adobe edit systems, ingest and prep stations with EVS integration as well as our PixitMedia storage are now installed in CTV’s truck.

Onsite engineers are now present, monitoring the systems and working with production to help with any requests or issues they may encounter  to provide the best possible service we can.

It’s been another great year of darts for us in 2019, taking our engineers all over the UK & Ireland and we are proud of the fantastic coverage we have helped produce. We’re happy to see the sport continue to rise in popularity and look froward to what it brings in 2020.

THE SUN SETS ON OUR 2019 F1 SEASON

Another fantastic season of Formula One comes to an end this weekend in Abu Dhabi, and here, at The Collectv, we are all extremely proud to have been involved with every race on the calendar.

This year brought us new challenges, the need for greater flexibility drove our development of adaptable solutions, which could be scaled up and down for new requirements, where the working environments varied. This season has required us to constantly adapt and evolve different areas of our F1 operation, from logistics, to hardware and workflows.

Mercedes dominated the first half of the season and took both the constructors and drivers’ championship earlier this year. Like the race teams, our projects team back at The Collectv’s UK base, will be working hard over the winter, to develop workflows and systems to give greater efficiencies in speed and cost, to assist our production partners in delivering even greater content for the 2020 season.

GRAND SLAM OF DARTS - WOLVERHAMPTON

Fresh off the back of the USA Grand Prix last weekend, The Collectv is proud to be providing Sky Sports with systems and support at the Grand Slam of Darts in Wolverhampton. The whole tournament will be broadcast across their Arena, Action and Main Event channels across nine days and the Collectv will be there for the duration.

The Collectv is again working alongside CTV Outside Broadcasts supplying Adobe edit setups, EVS systems and integrated storage fitted on their MVT5 Server-truck for Sky Sports with full support from our on-site Engineers.

Life on the Road; Mexico City to Austin, Texas

As one crew files direct from Mexico to to the US, another crew joins them, flying out form the UK. The United States Grand Prix is one of our biggest races, 2019 will potentially be even bigger than usual, as Hamilton looks to become World Champion once again.

The Collectv kit room has also been busy this week with deliveries and collections as equipment leaves for multiple upcoming jobs including a large scale studio show, the United States Grand Prix in Texas and an upcoming week of darts in Wolverhampton for the PDC Grand Slam.

The varying shooting specs and storage requirements that each job demands across both Avid and Adobe systems as well as live playout has kept our engineers busy this month refining workflows and testing that our flyaway systems are optimized for use.

Meanwhile last weekend in Mexico City, The Collectv provided support both on site in Mexico and back here in the U.K, for what was a tactical Grand Prix that saw Hamilton come out on top but not far enough in front of Bottas to clinch the drivers world championship.

SINGAPORE AIRLINES SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX

We’re delighted to be back in Singapore for the Grand Prix this weekend especially with the news this week that Channel 4 and Sky have confirmed a new commercial contract to continue highlights of all races and full live coverage of the British Grand Prix in a multi-year deal. This is fantastic news for our Formula 1 friends and colleagues, as well as the British public, keeping the sport exposed to as many people as possible with free-to-air coverage.