Broadcast Hub Relocation

The decision to demolish the Language Teaching Centre in 2006 caused considerable consternation, as it had been the home of the Broadcast Hub for the previous 40 years. Much chasing of people in the estates department to try and ascertain who was responsible for the project, and what was going to be done about all the cables we used in there.

Eventually in week 9 of the autumn term, 2006, all remaining equipment was removed from the back cupboard in Linguistics and dumped temporarily in the station (where it was not best recieved!). Assured that the building would be flat by the time that we cam back from Christmas the cables were left free and marked to be pulled out of the structure before it disappeared. There was therefore some surprise when on returning the building looked much the same. It still looked like this several weeks later, and so with Battle of the Bands and Elections approaching, a decision was made to devise a temporary arrangement that did not require any equipment in LTC but joined up the cable ends to provide the necessary connectivity. This was duly installed, tested and much to everyone's surprise turned out to work. This provided the following links:

• Video and audio balanced lines (passive) from Vanbrugh Vent Room to G/046
• Video and audio balanced lines (passive) from Derwent to G/046, with the audio also continued to Vanbrugh so that URY could use it as a Goodricke - Vanbrugh link for Goodricke Elections hustings.
• Video (driven in P/S/016) and audio from G/046 through to Derwent TV.

Due to other works, the Langwith TV didn't exist at this point anyway, so nothing was lost there. That left Vanbrugh TVs blacked out. At that point, the tie lines from the Vanbrugh vent room to the stalls TV were unknown, so the cables from URY stores to the stalls were used to feed the output of a PC showing the web stream down to the TVs. Whilst this didn't exactly look great, it kept some picture on screen whilst the network was out.

The Derwent broadcast feed was acheived by moving the Rediffiusion contribution receiver from LTC out to the Langwith calorifier room where the cables to the TV were tapped off the trunk line to Derwent. Here the network driver from LTC was also installed to drive the last leg of the video cable to the Derwent Net box, and so keep the Derwent TV alive. This was important in particular to the Election Night broadcast because it was the only way the director in Derwent could see whether the director back at Goodricke had put them on air or not.

Once the tie-lines from Vanbrugh Vent Room to Vanbrugh Stalls TV had been re-discovered with help from Owain Davies (who had been found by the YSTV40 project), these were pressed into service to provide a means of sending proper video from the station to the TVs in Vanbrugh when the cables weren't in use for OBs. When they were, a DA in the vent room provided the necessary video feed.