Utah Scientific announced that South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB) chose the UTAH-400 series SD/HD routing Switcher, SC-4 routing control system and MC-2020 master control switcher as part of an HD upgrade to the master control room at its statewide broadcast facility.
SDPB provides public television and radio for South Dakota, serving 97 percent of the state’s population (about 680,000 viewers). It took delivery of the new Utah Scientific equipment this June. The full upgrade is scheduled for completion by June 2008.
“We plan to have the UTAH-400 router for 10 or even 20 years,” said Mike Johnson, senior studio engineer at SDPB. “We know that’s realistic because we had an analog router from Utah for 20 years, and it was completely reliable.”
Utah’s MC-2020 master control switcher has two SD and HD processor channels. The SC-4 routing control system will interface with a Quest Research & Development Q-Alert system, which automatically generates bulletins that appear during regularly scheduled programming as on-air data crawls and compressed video. Q-Alert uses text crawls and single- and dual-compression DVEs to display maps and radar images without obstructing regular programming.
