FiberPlex LightViper Fiber Optics Returned to the Superdome for Super Bowl Sunday

FiberPlex Technologies' LightViper fiber-optics system returned to the Superdome February 3, as a game-changer for broadcasters during Super Bowl Sunday.

"As they find new ways to get more signal flow onto fiber and with new advances in fiber technology that make it easier to route different fiber streams to different places, it's changing production and setup for broadcasters and on these large events," comments Michael Mason, the president for CP Communications, New York, which supplied remote subsystems, including LightViper fiber-optic audio transport, to the NFL Network and Touchdown Entertainment for Super Bowl coverage.

The company says longer range and greater bandwidth capability, combined with speed-of-light performance, complete noise immunity and secure connectivity make fiber-optics technology a vital player in sports production for transporting live camera and audio feeds directly from the field to a production studio on- or off-site.

In particular, new FiberPlex advances in active wave division multiplexing (WDM) make it possible to convert a single pair of fiber into 16 pairs of fiber for the multiple feeds typical of a live sportscast, therefore enabling uncompressed high quality media for longer range transport and in some cases, reducing the reliance on remote trucks for onsite production.

CP Communications has LightViper fiber-optics built into booth kits that include microphones, mixers, and other top-of-the-line equipment, which offered broadcasters plug-and-play transport within the Superdome stadium.

"We've come a long way since fiber was first used in the Super Bowl," comments Kyle Rosenbloom, the eastern regional client relations executive with FiberPlex Technologies, which has been making fiber products for a quarter of a century.

He says that the primary features of fiber-optics: immunity to noise, high bandwidth capability, unnoticeable latency, low total cost of ownership versus copper, and secure connectivity properties have made it a staple at many stadiums. However, the number of fiber strands needed in the past to transport several camera and audio feeds has made it cost prohibitive. New active WDM technology changes all that, he adds. "It is now not only possible to put all of those feeds on one cost-effective strand of fiber, but active WDM now gives us the simple plug-and-play, fast setup time needed, without the time consuming limitations of passive WDM. Now sportscasters can transport varying types of media in two directions, while at the same time respond to and adjust to changes in the field as they occur, which impacts other costs such as down time, setup time, and even remote truck expenses."

FiberPlex makes a full range of fiber-optics products for sports facilities, as well as for houses of worship, corporate facilities, higher education, K-12, financial institutions, retail environments, and more.