Ithaca College, in central New York State, offers comprehensive programs in television production, documentary studies, cinema, journalism and many related disciplines at the Roy H. Park School of Communications. Student-run ICTV, meanwhile, generates an ambitious and wide variety of programming ranging from news, documentaries and reality shows to football and basketball telecasts.
Now, with the opening of the college's new Athletics and Events Center — connected to the Roy H. Park School with 48 strands of single and multimode fiber — Ithaca College has upgraded its field-production capabilities with four Ikegami HDK-77EC full-digital multiformat HD CMOS camera systems, purchased through Audio Video, Syracuse, NY. As David Priester, director of technical operations for the Roy H. Park School explains, the new Ikegami cameras will improve ICTV's capabilities for providing superior HD and SD collegiate sports and special-event coverage, image magnification, and other high-profile remote-production applications.
Designed to meet the demands of an increasingly varied HD market needing both 1080i and 720p video-capture capability, Ikegami's HDK-77EC is an economical docking-style portable multiformat HD camera with CMOS imaging sensors for interlace and progressive format flexibility with reduced power consumption and lower operating temperature. The HDK-77EC can be used with Ikegami's CCU-890M camera control unit for built-in fiber (and optional triax) connectivity for convenient, lightweight, mobile flexibility.
Tripod-mounted and configured for studio and field use with Ikegami HLM-904 16:9 color LCD viewfinders, Ithaca College's four HDK-77EC cameras provide students with real-world experience on one of the industry's most advanced HD camera systems. The student-run ICTV unit produces hundreds of hours of programming each semester that is distributed through a local cable access channel to 26,000 households and streamed on the Internet. Other than a staff general manager and technicians, ICTV is virtually all student-run.
