SALT LAKE CITY: Utah Scientific announced that New Century Productions will expand the Utah Scientific routing system in its NCP VIII HD mobile production truck as part of a fleetwide upgrade. NCP VIII will be the last of NCP’s trucks to receive the upgrade.
NCP will replace the truck’s outmoded analog CRT monitors with a concave flat-panel HD monitor wall, which will be cooler, lighter, less bulky, and more energy-efficient. The replacement requires an expanded routing switcher to accommodate the new digital monitors, so NCP will install a UTAH-400 HD router, loaded 288x528, to serve as the hub of the operation inside the truck.
“In converting the truck from CRT to LCD, we’re almost doubling the number of displays a user can look at, and we’re replacing analog devices with HD, so we needed quite a bit more capacity,” said Mike Mundt, NCP’s director of engineering. “We’re replacing a routing switcher with 128 outputs with one that has 528 outputs, so it allows us to drive many more monitors.”
NCP VIII is a 53-foot expandable truck that does a great deal of work for CBS. It is in the midst of its upgrade now and, when it rolls out on Aug. 18, it will cover the US Open tennis tournament. This will be the fourth UTAH-400 routing switcher for NCP. In addition to the UTAH-400, NCP will also install a UTAH-100 16x1 HD router and a UTAH-100 16x1 analog video router, both with looping inputs.
