The Missionary Training Center (MTC) for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has installed five Utah ScientificUTAH-100/UDS routing switchers to link signals among all the facilities on its 19-building campus. The new routing switchers replaced aging systems that did not supply enough inputs and outputs, and they allowed the MTC's A/V operations to upgrade to HD video.
Each week, the campus receives several hundred new students who spend up to 12 weeks on campus preparing for their missionary service in a variety of classrooms and other settings, which demands a very busy A/V operation. The operation also relies on 26 part-time student-employees who don't have much experience with professional-grade technology. The campus needed a system that was intuitive to use yet responsive enough to route signals instantly. The Utah Scientific routers met those needs and more at a reasonable price.
The MTC's technology department provides all of the A/V systems to support classroom teaching, online teaching, video conferencing, recording and distribution, in-house IPTV, in-house analog and digital cable channels, large group presentations, multi-language interpretation, online streaming, and uplink for worldwide satellite distribution. The UTAH-100/UDS routing switchers provide MTC with inter-building connectivity for overflow and redundancy.
The UTAH-100/UDS router meets or exceeds all of MTC's technical requirements for a new routing system. It can route signals immediately, with the ability to lock routes to prevent accidental changes. Its compact size and smaller HD-BNC connectors allow the maximum number of inputs and outputs per rack unit in MTC's crowded racks. Users can access the routers over the network from any computer without needing to install any software — a vast improvement over MTC's old system that enables staff to perform upgrades over the network. Most important, the UTAH-100/UDS system's intuitive GUI is easy for inexperienced employees to learn and use.
MTC plans to expand the campus, which will increase the number of sources and destinations that must interconnect. When that happens, the UTAH-100/UDS' upgradeability will be especially helpful.
