With outdated CRT monitors in its control room beginning to fail, The Florida Channel, a statewide satellite TV service that provides coverage of the Florida Legislature, invested in new monitors from Plura Broadcast, a manufacturer of high-end professional LCD monitors for studio and field use.
According to Terry Longordo, chief engineer for The Florida Channel, Plura LCD monitors for the director and technical director stations in the control room were installed last summer. However, the staff was so impressed with the Plura monitors that additional monitors were installed for graphics and technical operations in November.
The Florida Channel purchased a variety of PBM-117 17in and PBM-120 20in monitors through COMMAND, a professional video integrator based in Clearwater, FL. “Plura Broadcast LCD monitors provide precision that exceeds expectations at a competitive price point,” said Michael Smith, president of COMMAND. “The Florida Channel needed something in place to accurately accommodate their 4:3 signals, but also give them the upgrade path to go 16:9 or HD in the future.”
Longordo said the main considerations for the new monitors were image quality, price and reliability. Both the PBM-117 and PBM-120 offer built-in scaling and deinterlacing technology, as well as HD/SD-SDI, composite, RGB, YUV, Y/C, UXGA and DVI inputs. The Florida Channel is taking advantage of the multiple inputs for monitoring multiple signals in the control room, Longordo added.
Currently, the facility is firmly entrenched in a tape-based SD workflow. However, Longordo expects to eventually move to a server-based workflow and widescreen production.
