4K OB Trucks in India: Inside ZOOM Communications' Next-Generation OB Fleet
What Is an OB Truck?
An Outside Broadcast (OB) truck, also referred to as an OB van or mobile production unit, is a complete television production control room engineered into a mobile platform. Camera feeds, audio sources, replay, graphics, intercom, monitoring, signal routing, and contribution/transmission systems are brought together within the vehicle, taking the broadcast studio beyond its walls and enabling an entire live production to be managed directly from the event location, whether that's an international sporting event, a concert, a ceremony, or a large-scale public gathering.
The Evolution of Outside Broadcast Trucks: From SD to 4K/UHD
Outside broadcasting dates back to the 1920s, but mobile television production evolved rapidly during the middle of the twentieth century. The BBC's Mobile Control Room was used for coverage of the 1937 coronation procession of King George VI, while the subsequent introduction of colour television drove the development of increasingly sophisticated OB vehicles.
Over the decades, OB technology has continuously evolved around higher camera counts, greater routing and processing capacity, improved reliability, lower system latency, and progressively higher picture quality. What began as relatively simple mobile television facilities has evolved through SD and HD into today's sophisticated UHD/4K production environments, increasingly incorporating IP-based broadcast architectures and remote-production workflows.
India's outside broadcast ecosystem has undergone a similar transformation, closely associated with the expansion of television broadcasting and the rapid growth of the country's sports and entertainment industries. Successive generations of SD and HD OB vans established mobile production as a critical component of India's broadcast infrastructure.
The transition from HD to UHD/4K, however, represents far more than an increase in picture resolution. It requires an end-to-end upgrade of the entire live-production chain, including signal acquisition, routing, production switching, replay, graphics, audio, monitoring, recording, storage, and transmission, while maintaining the reliability and extremely low latency demanded by live television production.
ZOOM Communications: Engineering Broadcast Excellence in India
Founded in New Delhi, ZOOM Communications has grown into one of South Asia's established broadcast production and systems-integration companies. At the turn of the century, ZOOM began designing and building advanced flyaway production systems to international broadcast standards, laying the foundation for developing world-class live-production capabilities within India rather than relying on production infrastructure being brought into the country on an event-by-event basis.
Since then, ZOOM's broadcast systems, engineering teams, and production services have supported assignments across more than 21 countries. In India, ZOOM was commissioned by the BCCI for the inaugural IPL season in 2008 and has remained closely associated with major cricket productions, deploying World Feed OB and flyaway systems for bilateral and international cricket across India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the UAE, the West Indies, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
ZOOM's experience extends well beyond cricket to some of the world's largest sporting and public events, including the Commonwealth Games in Delhi, the Asian Games, the Indian Super League, the Olympics, FIFA and ICC events, the G20 Summit, and the Kumbh Mela, which is one of the largest human gatherings in the world.
A Technology Milestone: Engineering India's First Fleet of 4K OB Trucks
A major milestone in ZOOM's broadcast systems journey was the design, engineering, integration, commissioning, and delivery of India's first fleet of purpose-built 4K/UHD outside broadcast trucks.
Within approximately one year, ZOOM engineered and delivered seven OB trucks, including three 4K and two large expando production units, to India's public service broadcaster. Designed around eight to sixteen camera production configurations, these vehicles bring together the complete UHD live-production workflow within fully integrated mobile production environments. A further six OB trucks are scheduled for handover during 2026, significantly expanding the fleet and its production capability.
The engineering of a modern 4K OB truck extends far beyond installing broadcast equipment inside a vehicle. Cameras, production switching, signal routing, replay, audio, graphics, monitoring, multi-viewing, intercom, synchronisation, recording, and transmission systems must operate as a single integrated production environment. Equally important are the underlying engineering disciplines, such as signal architecture, fibre and copper connectivity, equipment layout, power distribution, UPS and redundancy, thermal management, and operational ergonomics, that determine the reliability of the vehicle under demanding live-production conditions.
Complementing the OB fleet, ZOOM also introduced ultra-low-latency 4K wireless camera capability for major national sporting productions through the deployment of twelve Vislink HCAM wireless camera systems with Quantum receivers.
Complementing the main OB fleet are dedicated tender vehicles, designed to travel with the OB trucks and carry the extensive field equipment required for large-scale live productions, including broadcast lenses, camera systems, tripods and camera supports, RF and wireless-camera equipment, antennas, cable drums, fibre and power infrastructure, flight cases, and other production accessories that cannot practically be accommodated within the OB truck itself. Together, the OB truck and its tender vehicle operate as an integrated mobile production package, combining a sophisticated production control environment with the field infrastructure required for rapid deployment at demanding venues.
Looking ahead, ZOOM is also developing compact 4K EFP (Electronic Field Production) vans, designed for faster mobilisation and deployment at smaller productions where the scale of a full-size OB truck is not required, further extending the flexibility and scalability of its UHD live-production fleet.
Beyond the OB Truck: ZOOM's End-to-End Live Production Ecosystem
ZOOM's broadcast capability extends beyond individual OB vehicles. Its full Outside Broadcast and REMI/remote-production inventory supports routing capacities ranging from 128×128 to 1024×1024 across conventional SDI and modern IP-based architectures, and is built around two further pillars: modular flyaway production systems, and turnkey broadcast systems integration.
Modular Flyaway Production Systems
ZOOM's modular flyaway production systems package the core functionality of an OB production facility into ruggedised, transportable flight-case configurations, built around operational resilience and multiple layers of redundancy. They can be rapidly transported, deployed, and configured at venues where a conventional OB truck may not be practical, with production capacity scaled according to camera count, routing, replay, audio, graphics, monitoring, and transmission requirements, offering a highly flexible alternative to a fixed mobile production unit.
Turnkey Broadcast Systems Integration
Beyond operating broadcast systems, ZOOM provides end-to-end turnkey broadcast systems integration, from requirement analysis and system design through detailed engineering, equipment integration, installation, testing, commissioning, and operational support. Its systems-integration portfolio encompasses OB trucks, flyaway production systems, studios, production control rooms, newsroom infrastructure, and increasingly IP-based broadcast facilities, backed by ongoing engineering and operations management.
This combination of broadcast operations experience and systems-integration capability provides an important advantage: systems can be engineered not only around technical specifications, but around the practical requirements of engineers, operators, and production teams working in real-world live broadcast environments.
As India's appetite for live, high-definition content keeps growing, the infrastructure behind that content matters just as much as the events themselves. With India's first fleet of 4K OB trucks, ZOOM Communications isn't just keeping pace with that shift, it's helping build the broadcast backbone the country's next decade of live television will run on.