WTAE, the ABC affiliate in Pittsburgh, has purchased a UTAH-400 Router from Utah-Scientific to transmit SD and HD signals within the studio for its two digital channels. In addition to WTAE-TV4, broadcast in SD, the station offers an HD channel to area residents.
With the purchase, WTAE was looking to both convert its infrastructure to serial digital and embedded audio as well as to automated recording of satellite-fed syndicated programming, according to WTAE director of engineering Dave Kasperek. He added that the station had used Utah-Scientific AVS-1 analog routers since the 1970s.
The UTAH-400 is used as the station’s main router for transmission and signal distribution and allows WTAE to manage various types of signal formats simultaneously. This ensures that the various audio and video feeds are routed to the appropriate signal converters and on to the correct SD or HD
channel.
Along with the UTAH-400 routing switcher, WTAE has installed a Harris and CompuSet automation software and records feeds for both channels on MediaStream 900 storage servers. WTAE’s UTAH-400 router will eventually become the foundation for the station’s all-HD operations.
The UTAH-400 is available in configurations from 8x8 to 1,152x1,152 using a single family of matrix building blocks, and features redundant power supplies and cross point and controller cards. The UTAH-400 product line includes HD and SD digital video switchers and a digital audio switcher.
For more information, visit www.utahscientific.com/.
