(April 5, 2004) Portland, OR--Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB)'s Network Center facility in Portland, responsible for creating the majority of the public television programming broadcast throughout the state, has upgraded most of its production equipment to enable HD acquisition and production. The facility, which is currently undergoing a complete conversion to SD and HD digital operations, recently purchased three Fujinon HA26x6.7ESM HD studio lenses to complement three new Sony HD cameras in the studio. One of the cameras and an ENG-style lens will be mounted on a free-swinging jib to capture unique POV angles.
Don McKay, OPB director of engineering for production, said that after seeing a few tests, the network quickly became convinced that Fujinon's HD lenses were exactly what they were looking for, both in terms of superb image quality and full servo remote control capability from a PC. He said programs captured with the Fujinon lenses are downconverted to standard definition for analog viewers before being broadcast. OPB broadcasts 24/7 in analog and about five hours of HD content per day on its digital channel.
"I can honestly say that the Fujinon HD lenses make our analog and SD digital feed look better," said McKay. "A high-quality image is what we were after and that's what we got. By capturing programs in HD, we're future-proofing them. We know we'll be doing full-time HD broadcasting at some point, so we felt it was important to get started on the production side."
Fujinon
www.fujinonbroadcast.com
CATEGORIES
