Exterity Helps The Snow Centre Bring the Alps to Hemel Hempstead

Published 6th August 2009

Exterity Helps The Snow Centre Bring the Alps to Hemel Hempstead

Building IPTV solution streams live action from the slopes plus news and
sports throughout the UK’s newest real-snow indoor snow park

London, 4th August 2009: Exterity, the building IPTV specialist, has deployed its end-to-end building IPTV solution at The Snow Centre in Hemel Hempstead, London, the UK’s newest real-snow indoor ski park. The IPTV solution enables the newly-built centre to stream live views from its slopes plus news and sports to LCD screens mounted throughout the centre. The result is an engaging experience that reproduces the excitement and atmosphere of an alpine resort in a convenient London location.



The Snow Centre, which opened in May 2009, is expected to attract 250,000 visitors in its first year. Leading snow sport governing bodies including the British Association for Snow Sport Instructors and UK Snow Sport have already endorsed the venue. To maximize the ‘wow factor’ of a centre that includes a huge 160-metre main slope and the UK’s largest indoor lesson slope. The centre also installed a 57” LCD screen to welcome guests in the entrance foyer, showing action from the slopes.



In addition, nine 40-inch screens mounted in the various café and leisure areas display skiing action plus live coverage from sports and news channels, as well as recorded content to promote upcoming events, such as competitions, and advertising for local businesses, which provides an additional revenue stream.



David Surrey, Commercial Director of the Snow Centre comments “The Snow Centre is the culmination of a dream that started here over thirty years ago: to provide a world-class indoor skiing experience. Our new facility not only features state-of-the-art snow cannons and course grooming equipment, but sports a living sedum roof that makes the Centre one of the most environmentally-friendly buildings in southern England. The Exterity system is a natural complement to the high-tech nature of the centre and helps us create an exciting experience for visitors whether they’re on or off the slopes.”



With its long, 30-metre wide slopes and extensive retail, leisure, and dining facilities, The Snow Centre is a very large building. This posed a challenge to traditional coax networks that suffer signal degradation from long cable runs, which causes ghosting and picture break-up. With such a system, the centre would also have found it difficult and expensive to add more channels to respond to new opportunities.



By contrast, Exterity’s building IPTV solution delivers sparkling picture quality throughout the centre using the same LAN that also supports the business activities of the staff, avoiding the additional capital and operational expense of a second network. It can easily expand to include new channels, users, or displays, giving the Centre a future-proof solution. These factors made it ideal for the project, which was installed by leading networking services Integration company, Switchnet Systems.



Dave Hancock, Managing Director at Switchnet Systems ltd. says: “A LAN is a fundamental part of any new build of this magnitude. Its spare capacity easily accommodates the streaming content supplied by Exterity, increasing the centre’s return on their network infrastructure investment. The ability to easily add new channels or displays means that The Snow Centre will be able to leverage their building IPTV investment well into the future to meet new opportunities.”



“The Snow Centre wanted to create an environment in which every guest could enjoy the atmosphere, whether they are skiers or non-skiers. Its success with Exterity demonstrates how TV and video can really boost the visitor experience at sports venues, helping to ensure that everyone has a great day out and wants to return soon,” says Colin Farquhar, CEO of Exterity.



Read the full case study on The Snow Centre at: http://www.exterity.com/customers/case_studies.html