The New England School of Communications, located on the campus of Husson College in Bangor, ME, has purchased two Thomson Grass Valley Kayak HD switchers.
One switcher is installed in the school’s existing production studio, and the other is onboard a new HD-capable mobile production truck. While productions will initially be in SD, the Kayak HD switchers allow the school to expand new HD capabilities around the multiformat switchers.
The two Kayak switchers were chosen so that students could work with the same touch-screen interface whether in the studio or on the road. Finished programs are fed live and tape-delayed to the fiber-optic campus network.
The new mobile unit is a 32-ft trailer and includes an all-digital SDI signal path that houses multiple digital cameras that are fed into the Kayak HD switcher.
The Kayak HD is part of a family of HD/SD multiformat production switchers from 1 M/E to 4.5 M/Es. Available in a 4RU or 8RU frame, the Kayak HD is switchable between HD (1080i, 720p, and several 1080pSF formats) and SD (525-line and 625-line) formats.
The switcher offers four keyers per mix/effects, up to 96 mappable SDI inputs, 48 mappable SDI outputs and up to 16 internal video source scalars for up, down and crossconversion for true multiformat production.
For more information, visit www.thomson.net.