Vermont Public Television (VPT) has purchased four new Hitachi SD-HD1000 digital HDTV studio cameras as part of an extensive HD production upgrade at its Colchester, VT broadcast television facility.
"We chose the Hitachi SK-HD1000 after a year of exhaustive, comparative research and testing of all major HDTV studio cameras on the market," said Joseph Tymecki, CPBE, chief technical officer at VPT in a statement. "Since the cameras replaced four older analog studio cameras that'd been in service for nearly 20 years, we wanted to be sure we were ordering studio cameras that would serve us well into the future."
As part of the upgrade, VPT also acquired a Ross Vision multi-format production switcher, Chyron LEX3 live HD graphics system, Omneon server and Miranda router. This upgrade was the final phase of a four-phase upgrade that included four new DTV transmitters, master control room, and a move to non-linear editing workflow in earlier phases.
The new Hitachi SK-HD1000 cameras are outfitted with Hitachi TU-HD1000 camera control units, VF-HP840 8-inch color LCD viewfinders, and RU-1200JY remote control units, as well as the Fujinon ZA-22x7.6BERM HD telephoto zoom lenses with 2X extenders.
The camera's ability to capture content in native 1080i and the fact that the SK-HD1000 camera heads provide enough power to run their LCD teleprompters were crucial factors in the decision to acquire the Hitachi cameras, Tymecki noted.
"We also did extensive testing of Hitachi's digital triax system compared to a SMPTE fiber optic solution, and we found the picture quality to be superb despite the signal compression," Tymecki also explained in a statement. "This is important to us because our production truck and many of the remote venues we shoot in use triax. Our engineers and crew are familiar with the maintenance of triax connectors."
