Unmatched Multimedia Management

NBA Digital, the multimedia management hub in Atlanta that is part of Turner Sports, is the heartbeat of the company’s cross-platform portfolio of digital assets managed by the NBA and Turner, which include NBA TV, the NBA app, NBA.com, NBA League Pass, NBALeague.com and WNBA.com.

When this enterprise’s massive Operations Center needed to set up video distribution protocols for 35 55-inch TVs and 44 sources so that everything would hum along in a trouble-free manner, the Acworth, Ga.-based integrator Total Connect Custom Audio & Video was called upon.

The installation solution included Just Add Power video distribution, controlled by URC’s Total Control TDC-7100 tabletop touchscreens in five separate rooms, handling 35 TVs in one room - including a three-TV wall, a four-TV video wall, a six-TV video wall and a six-TV scoreboard.

The Total Connect team custom-programmed URC’s Total Control user interfaces with current source buttons for all 44 sources, giving the engineers in the room the ability to track what source was being selected and to easily switch between sources.

“When we first did the walkthrough,” said Total Connect Custom Audio & Video Co-Owner Glenn Reinl, “I called URC and talked to my guy there to make sure we could do it, since it was a little out of the normal.”

Reinl explained, “Basically, anywhere that they stream anything, they have a device that is capable of it. If people start calling in and saying, ‘Hey, I am having problems watching something on Apple TV,’ they have one connected so they can just pull it up and start doing testing on it.  Whenever there’s a basketball game running, or for anything coming from the NBA on a streaming device, they have people monitoring them all to make sure they’re working correctly.”

Reinl added, “Most of the people there are pretty technically oriented. The guys who live in there all the time are techno-dudes and looking at apps and rewriting firmware. So it was easy to show them everything. But even the people there who aren’t super technical - you can teach them the basics easily. URC is very simple because it’s all one button press.”

He praised the URC system’s flexibility and its ability to “enable us to make changes and to do things you didn’t think you’d be able to do.” In fact, he says, since that installation was completed, he has put a large URC system into his own home with several remotes and touch screens. While it isn’t on the grand scale of the NBA Digital installation, it performs on an equally reliable level.

“URC does what it does very well, and at a reasonable price point. There hasn’t been a situation that I haven’t been able to overcome with it.”