PARIS – Hitachi Kokusai Electric Europe has announced the recent deployment of its DK-H100 HDTV box cameras by the French National Assembly as part of a HD upgrade. The new cameras are being used to record the Assembly’s daily sessions at the Palais Bourbon in Paris. All footage is subsequently transmitted over a fiber-optic connection to the master control room, located 350 meters away, for redistribution.
Following a call for tender, the French National Assembly purchased eight Hitachi Kokusai Electric Europe DK-H100 broadcast cameras through local systems integrator, Preview GM System. The Hitachi cameras, by replacing existing SDI equipment, become part of the first HD broadcast deployment within the bounds of the parliamentary ‘hemicycle.’
With 577 deputies and over 1000 hours of yearly debates, The French National Assembly is at the heart of the country’s parliamentary democracy, with recorded daily sittings which can often run into the night. The HD recordings from the Hitachi cameras on-site are immediately made available to the LCP-AN parliamentary channel and to the media. France 3, for example, offers live coverage of delegates’ questions to the government in a public service program called “Questions au gouvernement” on Wednesday afternoons.
The DK-H100 is a multi-purpose HDTV box type POV camera with a small light-weight head and a 2.3 million pixel native 1080i 3-CCD.
