Thomson's Grass Valley production equipment was used at the 79th Academy Awards telecast at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, which aired Feb. 25 on ABC. This year's production is the fifth HDTV broadcast of the Oscars.
NEP Supershooters provided three mobile production facilities, which are equipped with Grass Valley multiformat HD production equipment and systems, including HD cameras, switchers, servers, routers, and conversion modules. Two of its all-digital HD mobile units were on-site for the main awards presentation telecast; and another to cover celebrities arriving as part of ABC's pre-show coverage.
More than 20 Grass Valley LDK 6000 mk II WorldCam HD cameras were used throughout the Kodak Theatre in connection with its mobile units, along with two Grass Valley Kalypso Video Production Center switchers. Both mobile units employed several Grass Valley PVS 2000 HD Profile XP Media Platform servers, Grass Valley SMS7000 and Concerto Series routers, as well as a full complement of Grass Valley Kameleon signal processing and conversion modules.
ProQue LLC, a video server company, used four Grass Valley PVS 2000 HD Profile servers and a mix of five PDR 200 and PDR 300 MPEG SD servers for the live show inside the Kodak Theatre. ProQue has used the Profile server to support both the Academy Awards and Grammy telecasts (first in SD and now in HD) for the last 11 years.
