Last Friday, March 17th at the Teatro Massimo di Palermo, the 5G Audiovisual Broadcast Broadband Network project came to life with the Live Theater VR360 event, during which the ballet “Le Corsaire” was filmed in VR360 with the "Impersive POV" technique. The footage was broadcast live in the Palermo area and in particular at the Convitto Nazionale Falcone, where the students were able to enjoy the show through specific VR headsets.
The event was the first use case of the project, with which Rai Way, leader of a consortium of 11 partners, in July 2022 won the call for tenders from the Ministry of Economic Development (MIMIT) "5G AUDIOVISUAL 2022”, obtaining a funding of 1 million euros.
For the Politecnico di Milano, Luca Reggiani and Maurizio Magarini of the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering were in charge of the part of the project related to the development and use of the 5G-MAG instrument-based receiver for receiving 5G Broadcast services.
The one-year project involves the testing of 5G Broadcast in the areas of Palermo and Turin with innovative use cases.
Mauro D'Onofrio, Head of Innovation & Research of the Technology Department of Rai Way, and project coordinator, said: "We are very happy to have realized the first use case of the project at the Teatro Massimo di Palermo. The 5G Audiovisual Broadcast Broadband Network project integrates 5G technologies into the workflow of the production of live television content and allows innovative artistic scenarios by exploiting the network potential. It also presents cutting-edge technological elements for content distribution, experimenting with hybrid diffusion on 5G Broadcast and Broadband networks, in indoor, outdoor and automotive scenarios".
At the heart of the project, Rai Way is experimenting with 5G Broadcast technology which implements one-to-all transmission, the same used in digital terrestrial television, and SIM-agnostic reception, operating on network infrastructure and frequency resources in the 700Mhz band granted by the Ministry of Economic Development and independent from those of mobile operators.
In addition to the Politecnico di Milano, the consortium is made up of: Rai, with its Technological Innovation and Experimentation Research Center Departments and the Turin TV Production Center, the Municipality of Turin, Rohde&Schwarz, OpNet, MainStreaming, Impersive, Kinecar, RETESETTE, La Sicilia Multimedia and the Teatro Massimo di Palermo.