Fast-tracked IP upgrade readies trucks for first green flag of the NTT IndyCar Series season.
Company profile
A division of Penske Entertainment, IMS Productions is the technical team behind the scenes that brings NTT IndyCar Series racing to fans at home.
Just in time for the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season opener, BeckTV upgraded IMS Productions’ mobile trucks with an IP infrastructure built on Imagine Communications’ Selenio Network Processor (SNP).
SNPs across 5 trucks
SNP Multiviewers deployed
to upgrade to IP and HDR
To make its broadcasts more flexible, future-ready, and visually stunning with HDR support, the company went to BeckTV in December 2024 to upgrade its production trucks to an IP-based infrastructure, starting with its flagship mobile unit — the HD-5.
While this project was initially slated to be completed over five years, a new IndyCar broadcast partner, Fox Sports, was announced for the 2025 season. Now, IMSP needed the ability to support 1080p and HDR production in time for the first green flag, which would wave on February 28 at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. With a dramatically condensed timeline of only a couple months, the BeckTV pit crew quickly got to work.
The team removed the baseband system from IMSP’s trucks — routers, multiviewers, and frame syncs — and replaced it with Imagine Communications’ Selenio™ Network Processor (SNP). The decision to partner with Imagine on this project was based on three key factors: BeckTV’s familiarity with the company’s solutions, the ease and speed in which these solutions could be deployed, and the unmatched flexibility of the SNP, which features four processing engines. Each of these engines can be assigned a different personality, enabling us to quickly configure the units for a range of production functions, while minimizing the equipment needed to save valuable space.
In total, 70 SNPs were deployed across five trucks, creating a cohesive, connected facility. Thirty-three of the units are configured as multiviewers — an essential function in motorsports, where directors must make split-second decisions based on fast-moving action. The SNP Multiviewer delivers exceptionally low latency and incredibly crisp imaging quality, supporting native 1080p and UHD or 4K output directly to the monitor wall. Several SNPs are utilizing the IP Synchronizer personality to enable high-density, ultra-low-latency SDI/IP gateway functionality, while the Conversion personality is being used in others for up-, down-, and cross-conversion.
The SNP’s ability to perform edge conversion is particularly valuable for IMSP’s operations. It allows incoming signals to be normalized — such as upconverting 720p to 1080p — when they come into the system, while also applying frame sync and color correction. Performing this processing at the edge minimizes complexity in the core system and ensures format consistency throughout. The SNP also has powerful audio capabilities integrated within its various personalities, which became key in this project. IMSP’s audio system remains baseband, and the SNPs are interfacing with it via 38 paths of MADI conversion. For control, BeckTV relied on Imagine’s Magellan™ Control System. Its intuitive interface allowed IMSP’s team to become proficient very quickly. It only took the engineer in charge of the truck a couple of shows to become comfortable using it, and now he’s creating and managing more complex shows with greater ease and speed than is possible in a baseband environment.
“If you were one of the millions that watched the (Indianapolis 500) race — which had its largest audience in 17 years — everything you saw on air touched a piece of Imagine equipment.”
“I’m not sure how a production of this scale would have been possible without the SNP,” added Olivier. “All the units across Paris performed flawlessly, and the ST 2110 infrastructure they enabled provided us with a great deal of flexibility in terms of formats and resolutions, while dramatically increasing the efficiency of our workflow. And the video quality offered to our viewers with JPEG XS was exceptional. Delivery was very fast with no latency, and it was impossible to see the difference between the native and uncompressed video.
“The IMSP upgrade project has been a tremendous success, and Imagine Communications provided outstanding support to get us across the finish line,” said Paul Nijack, managing partner and general manager at BeckTV. “It was completed on time for the first race of the year, and it has been smooth sailing with the trucks ever since.”
Nijack added, “Most recently, they were used to broadcast the iconic Indianapolis 500. If you were one of the millions that watched the race — which had its largest audience in 17 years — everything you saw on air touched a piece of Imagine equipment.”
“The IMSP upgrade project has been a tremendous success, and Imagine Communications provided outstanding support to get us across the finish line.”
Paul Nijak
BeckTV
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