Idaho Public Television is relying on two Broadcast Pix Slate 1000 integrated digital production switchers to produce its new “Legislative Live” service covering Idaho Senate and House proceedings.
The service delivers gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Idaho State Legislature, which premiered on Jan. 8, 2007, and is distributed as a public service via several different media platforms, including over-the-air broadcast, digital cable, the Web, mobile phones and audio podcasts.
The operation’s production control room is located in a 15ft by 9ft room in the basement of the Idaho State Capitol building, so the multiple functions offered in a Slate 1000 system were critical. The Slate 1000 provides the same functions found in a room full of broadcast equipment, such as character generation (CG), digital video effects (DVE), still store and a digital production switcher, in an integrated unit requiring only a single person to operate.
With identical configurations, Idaho Public Television’s Slate 1000 systems are configured to accept SDI inputs from three Panasonic AW-E860A SD cameras located in the House and Senate Chambers, respectively. These cameras are equipped with Fujinon A20x8.6BMD 20X Professional Motor Drive Zoom lenses and Panasonic AW-PH36ON Indoor Pan-Tilt Systems. The cameras can be controlled via the Broadcast Pix camera control system, and their pictures displayed on the Slate 1000’s integrated multiview VGA monitors.
While Idaho Public Television's station infrastructure has been upgraded for native 1080/60i HDTV production and broadcast, “Legislative Live” is broadcast in SDTV on two of the PBS station’s DTV channels. Anyone with an Internet connection can view the live coverage of the House or Senate proceedings at either 56k or 300k broadband. The Slate 1000 systems produce all of the content that feeds these various media platforms. The SDI output from the Slate 100 also is downconverted by two Digital Rapids DRC 1400 streaming cards and passed on for Web streaming.
For more information, visit www.broadcastpix.com.
