AV Case Study: Environment Canterbury Council Chambers
A Televic conferencing solution helps brings order to this New Zealand council’s hybrid meetings.
13 October 2025
Text:/ Christopher Holder
Environment Canterbury (E-Can) is the regional council for Canterbury, New Zealand. With a mission to manage the region’s natural resources, facilitate environmental stewardship, and serve its community through transparent governance, the council needed to modernise its Christchurch-based chambers to reflect the hybrid realities of contemporary government meetings.
THE CHALLENGE
Council chambers, once relatively simple in AV terms, have undergone a profound transformation in recent years, along with evolving public transparency and governance requirements. What was once a basic combination of gooseneck microphones and a PA system now demands: seamless hybrid meeting capabilities via Teams and Zoom; high-quality, publicly accessible livestreams; integrated audio, video, control and automation; archiving and meeting recordings; voting, discussion and chairperson management tools; and fail-safe reliability and remote support.
E-Can needed an AV system that met these modern demands without burdening the council staff with complexity. Importantly, it required a solution that would be resilient, user-friendly and futureproof – a benchmark that other councils could emulate.
THE SOLUTION
Vega New Zealand, a leading AV integrator, partnered with PAVT (with PAVT Sales Manager, Tim Lambert, providing on-the-ground support and PAVT Product Manager, David Di Muzio, providing technical and design support) to deliver a system centred around Televic’s wired delegate discussion units, which seamlessly integrate with a Crestron Sightline camera tracking system and Q-SYS audio processing. Together, they form a cohesive ecosystem that automates and elevates the council’s hybrid meetings.
At the heart of the installation are 24 Televic Confidea wired tabletop units, connected in a redundant loop topology. Each unit features a touch display, push-to-talk functionality, and LED indicators for live status feedback. While E-Can doesn’t yet use all available features, the system supports future activation of voting, request-to-speak, and delegate authentication via ID cards.
From an AV integration standpoint, the system handles: microphone activation-based camera switching (via Crestron API); voice lift to ceiling speakers for gallery amplification; Dante output with mix-minus for seamless integration into the audio backbone; built-in diagnostics for system health, connectivity and metadata (talk time, participation logs); and reliable power and data via PoE – eliminating batteries or external power.
Says Vega Technology Consultant Brett Minnie:
“The audio quality of the Televic units is outstanding. You can hear it on the E-Can livestreams. In fact, when it comes to delegate systems, we specify Televic exclusively — it just works. Reliable, easy to integrate, clear. We’ve installed it in the Samoan Parliament and others, and have plans to deploy the same design in future councils.”
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when it comes to delegate systems, we specify Televic exclusively — it just works. Reliable, easy to integrate, clear
THE RESULT
The new AV system at Environment Canterbury is a tightly integrated, automated environment that supports: Teams participation, with automated camera switching to the active speaker and chairperson; public livestreaming via YouTube, with a dynamic four-panel video layout; high-quality recordings for archival and compliance; wireless content sharing, via Crestron AirMedia; room-wide projection, confidence monitors, and zone-controlled audio playback; centralised control, via secure Crestron touchpanels and a single PIN-based activation process; and remote monitoring, via Crestron XIO Cloud for Vega’s Wellington service team.
Importantly, the system removes the need for an AV technician to be present, empowering council staff to run meetings independently with confidence.
Brett Minnie again:
“This is what a hybrid-ready council chamber should look like. In a meeting earlier today, another council said: ‘We want what E-Can has.’ That’s exactly the outcome we were hoping for – a repeatable, proven template powered by Televic.”
Vega: vega-global.co.nz
PAVT (Televic): pavt.com.au
Each Televic unit in this deployment is connected via a redundant loop (PoE, Data and control), avoiding battery requirements and ensuring consistent uptime. Physical feedback – LED indicators and haptics – confirm mic status, while back-end diagnostics allow operators to monitor unit health and cable integrity. User ID cards can be employed for attendance logging and access control, and units store detailed metadata including talk times and participation logs.
RESPONSES