Outside broadcast specialist O21 Television has unveiled a£4m HD OB truck - and its first production will be ITV1's hit show Dancing on Ice, which returns on 20 January.
Outside broadcast specialist O21 Television has unveiled a £4m HD OB truck - and its first production will be ITV1's hit show Dancing on Ice, which returns on 20 January.

The state-of-the-art truck is part of an ongoing £10m investment by Gravity Media Group (GMG), which bought O21 from ITV last January for a reported £4.5m.

O21 will launch the truck, Unit 8, on 11 January, following 20 weeks of building work by OB truck specialists Smiths of Great Bentley. GMG's Gearhouse Broadcast took delivery of the truck in October to complete integration.

O21 managing director Rob Hollier described Unit 8 as 'one of the best production trucks in the UK and Europe. It will rival anything in the industry.'

Unit 8 includes 24 Sony HDC 1500 cameras, 16 VTRs and a 4ME 80-input Sony vision mixer. It also has a three-tier production gallery with an 84-source TFT monitor gallery and a Calrec Alpha audio mixer with Blue Fin technology and AES audio router to enable 5.1 surround sound audio and multi-track recordings.

The truck is the latest addition to O21's fleet of nine production trucks and five tape trucks and tender vehicles.

This is O21's second year of providing OB facilities for Dancing on Ice.

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