ALEXANDRIA, VA.—The customer is always right is a well-repeated phrase, but it’s something that furniture manufacturers have been taking to heart when developing some of their latest furniture models for the broadcast industry. Whether they’re making more compact models or offering updatable features for the future, a lot of these new systems were or will be influenced by the people who use them on a day-to-day basis.
Forecast GCX-Continuum
FORECAST CONSOLES
The latest offering from Forecast Consoles is the soon-to-be launched GCX-Continuum, which was unveiled at the 2017 NAB Show. This modular console system allows users to customize it into a two-bay, three-bay or four-bay setup, providing two, three or four turrets at the top of the model.
“The idea is to have everything be modular,” said Ryan Haberman, director of brand development for Forecast in Hauppauge, N.Y. “So you can two-bay, three-bay, four-bay; you can then hot swap all the turrets and you can do turrets in 2RU, 3RU, 4RU and 5RU, as well as countertop inserts and monitor drop offs.”
The GCX-Continuum includes 28–56 outlets for integrated power; removable front and rear hinge metal doors; cable pass thru for each tub, allowing cables to run from one tub to another without being exposed; as well as a multilane cabling system that divides the cables into three vertical lanes to separate power, data and audio.
“We made it super flexible both in the initial design and then super flexible in the future design,” Haberman said. “Whatever your changing needs require is what we’re trying to do.”
TBC Consoles IntelliTrac
TBC CONSOLES
TBC Consoles makes it a point to listen to its customers in the field to determine how they want units to work and then to design the furniture around those requirements. One of the company’s most recent examples is the IntelliTrac, a back-to-back console that incorporates a large screen for multiviewers and front and rear aluminum tracks for mounting monitors or accessories.
The IntelliTrac incorporates rack units for all of the user’s equipment, removable turrets to access the equipment and enable wire management, and it features back-to-back multiviewer screens. Additional features include pullout CPU shelves.
“Our consoles are modular and adaptable to different needs so we’ll ask: What is your current use? Where do you see this going? And then we can do things that will allow for the console to change over time,” said Jansen Hahn, director of operations for the Edgewood, N.Y.-based company.
Winsted Spectrum-2
WINSTED
Winsted integrated suggestions from users on one of its previous models and developed a console more compact and aesthetically pleasing. The Spectrum-2 is geared specifically toward the broadcast market and is a bay-type console system that can be configured as large or as small as the user desires.
While its predecessor offered Winsted’s Versa Track as an option, the Spectrum-2 features the monitor mounting system as a standard, allowing for the adjustment of monitors as needed. The ergonomically correct system provides appropriate sight lines for operators to sit and clearly view the monitor wall. The unit’s redesign also made it more aesthetically pleasing, as Brent Leimer, a marketing manager at U.K.-based Winsted, pointed out, control rooms are being featured more predominantly and operators want “nice looking furniture.”
“We like to say that furniture is as integral and important as any other part of the control room, and it should be taken into consideration from the early design phases,” Leimer said.
