Discovery Communications adds a multipurpose HD control room

This year, Discovery Communications added an HD control room to its production center in Silver Spring, MD, to serve the expanding HD and SD production needs. The new room needed to be easily configurable between HD and SD and serve triple duty as a control room for live events, a post-production editing suite and a program-reformatting room. National TeleConsultants designed and created this multipurpose HD/SD room.

To serve these varied tasks, equipment choices included a Grass Valley Kalypso Duo HD/SD production switcher, an Avid Deko 3000 Hybrid SD/HD character generator and EVS XT2 HD/SD production servers with Grass Valley LVS Live Event Management System controllers to record and play audio and video on short turnaround, as needed.

In order to provide complex communications often required for live events, a sophisticated, easily programmable intercom system was needed. For this, a Telex/RTS Adam-CS 64 x 64 Matrix Intercom was chosen to support live-event production.

In addition to the technical and operational requirements, the control room had to physically fit within an existing space not originally intended for this purpose. The space did have several crucial features already in place, including sound-isolated walls and close proximity to the in-house production studio.

Flat-panel, large-screen HD LCD monitors from Clarity and Sony helped make efficient use of space; they take up far less space than traditional CRT monitors. The addition of an Evertz 3000 MVP multi-image display processor enables control room users to quickly reconfigure the room’s monitors for live HD/SD production or post-production work. This programmable system allows directors to resize and reassign video fed to the displays in any desired format at a moment’s notice.

To put a premium on space, the HD control room needed to include an audio control room. In order to accomplish the sound isolation needed, a room within a room was constructed for audio control. A compact Calrec Zeta 100 24-strip/96-input audio console combining features for post with the redundancy needed for live production was installed, as well as other space-saving audio equipment from 360 Systems, Denon, Pioneer, Shure, Sony, Tannoy and Tascam, further maximizing the use of space in the audio booth.

The result of the collaboration between National TeleConsultants and Discovery Communications yielded an HD control room with versatile, forward-thinking HD/SD equipment choices designed to serve Discovery Communications’ many networks and prevent the need for forklift upgrades far into the future.