Eurovision Services has just completed a major technological overhaul of its facilities to equip the broadcast services company for the future as it prepares to manage transmissions for some of the biggest live events of the year.

The project started with new desks being installed inside Eurovision Control (EVC) at the company headquarters in Geneva over the Christmas holidays. These new desks will accommodate completely new individual monitoring stations with state-of-the-art curved screens technology for improved ergonomics.

At the start of 2021, a new ASI-SDI matrix was installed at the EVC in Geneva, with the SDI matrix at the company’s back-up facility in Switzerland replaced shortly afterwards in order to expand capacity further.

More recently, a new L-band matrix has been installed at the EVC in Geneva, to which new integrated receiver-decoders (IRDs) are connected. A new network management system has been deployed and any IRD can now receive any signal.

This complex project was completed without a hitch thanks to careful planning, the choice of a low-traffic period on the Eurovision Global Network for the main installation phases and the excellent support of the suppliers involved.

“This is a major step in the upgrade of our Geneva Network Operations Centre,” explains Amine Hafnaoui, Head of Operations and Engineering at Eurovision Services, “but it is just the first phase in an ambitious project to equip Eurovision Services for the future. We will continue to invest in upgrading our infrastructure and review our operating model to meet requirements of this new technology.”