Vatican goes 4K with Sony HDC-5500 cameras

Vatican Media, the Vatican’s official content broadcasting institution, has upgraded its broadcast infrastructure with Sony UHD solutions such as the HDC-5500 4K camera.

The extensive renovation project of Vatican Media’s production infrastructure, which began in 2020 and has recently culminated, has encompassed the modernization of a wide variety of cameras used to show and preserve events held at the Vatican. Sony’s HDC-5500 cameras have replaced the previous generation cameras by bringing new capabilities such as 4K, HDR and HDR filming, or global shutter technology, which allows 4K images to be captured with low noise. The update also includes the use of a technique that allows two camera heads to be connected to a single cable. Subsequently, the signals from these capture systems are monitored on Sony PVM series monitors.

Another improvement has been installing Sony BRC-H800 PTZ cameras inside the iconic St. Peter’s Basilica, whose small size and remote-control capabilities provide significant creative freedom without impacting the historic environment. The selection of Sony cameras present at the Vatican is completed by an FX9 camera, installed in St. Peter’s Square to film this location uninterruptedly.

Additionally, the entire Vatican broadcasting system has been upgraded to a more agile fiber network, connecting the cameras to the production control rooms using Sony’s HDCE-100 adapter. This fiber-optic interconnection makes it possible to connect multiple Vatican City sites to create a baseband network to dynamically transmit content to the control room, streaming audio or video signals, or also control IP networks for SDVN applications.

Francesco Masci, director of the Vatican’s technology department, highly appreciates the performance of the Sony equipment: “Thanks to Sony’s innovative solutions, we’ve built a high quality and future-proof system which will transport viewers to The Vatican and help spread our message worldwide better than ever before. Building such a complex system while in-keeping with the historic location was never going to be an easy task, but by using the expertise of our long-term partners Sony we were able to find the perfect solution.”

Norbert Paquet, head of Sony Professional Europe’s live production solutions division, welcomes his long-term agreement with Vatican Media and looks forward to “continuing to work closely with Vatican Media as a technology partner and helping them to expand in crescendo the potential of broadcasting from this historic place with such a valuable heritage to always reach every corner of the world.”