TVN LIVE PRODUCTION Upgrades With Hitomi MatchBox

TVN LIVE PRODUCTION, one of Europe’s leading mobile production companies, has purchased three Hitomi MatchBox Generator and Analyser systems - complete with MatchBox Glass licenses – for upgraded capability across its studios complexes in Hamburg and Hanover as well as in its OB trucks.

The deployment gives TVN the ability to benefit from absolute synchronicity between video and audio and deliver parallel output formats such as HD, 1080p and UHD. The production company plans to upgrade all its studios and OB trucks to Hitomi MatchBox as it transitions more of its capabilities from 1080i to 1080p/UHD. 

Christoph Moll, Technical manager at TVN LIVE PRODUCTION, explained, “The Glass app gives us a huge advantage and means that we can once again extend the reliability of synchronous video / audio transmission, even when we process signals from external service providers. Everyone on the team has an iPhone at hand and can access the app and test audio and video links from in front of the camera quickly and easily. In the OB van, we can read the runtime with the Hitomi system and seamlessly make adjustments accordingly.” 

All TVN OB vans producing 1080p/UHD are now equipped with MatchBox, including TVN-Ü3, TVN-Ü5 and TVN-Ü6. The company’s flightcase-based production unit, TVN-MPU3, houses both the legacy system for 1080i projects along with MatchBox to support 1080p. The TVN-Ü1 and TVN-Ü2 units are now being integrated into the fleet with upgraded capabilities. 

MatchBox is a state-of-the-art toolkit that streamlines live broadcast synchronisation and is relied on by broadcasters worldwide to ensure the timing of live sports, news and events. It offers an intuitive identing feature, rapid measurement of lip sync, audio coherence, audio levels, phase inversions and video timing. The MatchBox Analyser tool sits in the OB truck or MCR and looks and listens for the specific Hitomi video and audio signatures produced by the hardware MatchBox Generator (which produces 4K test patterns) and/or the MatchBox Glass app. 

A new essential for high-profile remote productions, the MatchBox Glass app allows precision measurement of lip-sync and video to video timing alignment at the point of capture. The user holds an iPhone or iPad running the free iOS app in front of up to four cameras and feeds the signal back into the Analyser.

You might also like...

Building Hybrid IP Systems

It is easy to assume that the industry is inevitably and rapidly making the move to all-IP infrastructures to leverage IP’s flexibility and scalability, but the reality is often a bit more complex.

Microphones: Part 9 - The Science Of Stereo Capture & Reproduction

Here we look at the science of using a matched pair of microphones positioned as a coincident pair to capture stereo sound images.

Monitoring & Compliance In Broadcast: Monitoring Cloud Networks

Networks, by their very definition are dispersed. But some are more dispersed than others, especially when we look at the challenges multi-site and remote teams face.

Audio At NAB 2025

Key audio themes at NAB 2025 remain persistently familiar – remote workflows, distributed teams, and ultra-efficiency… and of course AI. These themes have been around for a long time now but the audio community always seems to find very new ways of del…

Remote Contribution At NAB 2025

The technology required to get high quality content from the venue to the viewer for live sports production remains an area of intense research and development, so there will be plenty of innovation and expertise in this area on the…