SOUTHLAKE, TEXAS—Ten Eighty Media, a full service event staging and equipment rental house, was formed in 2008 by David Cleaves and myself. We serve the Dallas/Fort Worth market and beyond, specializing in high-end live event production, broadcast video equipment rental, as well as rental of a wide variety of lighting, grip and audio gear. And for the past two years, we’ve been using Panasonic’s AV-HS450N SD/HD model as the production switcher of choice in our video flypacks.
SELF-CONTAINED MULTIVIEWER
Panasonic's HS450N production switcher The Panasonic HS450N has many features that make it our go-to production switcher, including a couple that have really proven to be lifesavers—the built-in multiviewers that have eliminated the need to drag around loads of heavy HD monitors—and also the switcher’s small footprint.
We serve corporate and broadcast clientele as diverse as Microsoft, Frito-Lay, the CBS Sports Network, Pier 1 Imports, and Fox Sports. We recently covered the USA Olympic team’s rowing time trials, and a large poker tournament at an Oklahoma casino. And this fall, one of our Panasonic-powered flypacks is already reserved for a couple of months’ use.
The flexibility of the HS450N switcher, in conjunction with the rest of our flypack, makes it an ideal touring partner. Thanks to the unit’s four built-in up/down/cross-converting video inputs, and the add-on full-HD resolution DVI cards, we now have extra scaling power and can free up our standalone scaler units for use on other jobs.
The HS450N has provided us with a really great HD production tool. Other competitors in the single M/E switcher market don’t even come close to in terms of its capabilities. The Panasonic switcher comes with 16 standard HD/SD-SDI inputs, and can be expanded to accommodate as many as 20 video sources. It sports two option slots, along with four aux outs, four HD/SD-SDI outputs, and two DVI-D outputs. These features really put the HS450 in a class of its own in terms of bang for the buck.
This switcher absolutely reinforces our reputation at Ten Eighty Media of being nimble, providing well-engineered systems, and being able to provide full high-definition video production capability.
I’ll admit that we did look at other switchers, but kept coming back to the Panasonic HS450N as it seemed to be the only one that was really designed with our line of work in mind.
This switcher has proven itself to be rock solid, easy-to-use, loaded with all essential functions, and a great overall production tool for the live event video world. It even has picture-in-picture capability (actually the HS450N comes with two PiPs). You could spend thousands more for a switcher and still not get all of the features and capabilities that the HS450N provides. I really think we made a wise choice.
Michael Bird is the owner of Ten Eighty Media and may be contacted at mb@teneightymedia.com.
For more information, contact Panasonic at 877-803-8492 or visit www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
