Teleview Racing Patrol, a provider of HD broadcast services for horse- and dog-racing facilities, has deployed a UTAH-400 HD routing switcher and a UTAH-200 analog audio switcher from Utah Scientific to support an upgrade of its facilities at Charles Town Races and Slots in Charlestown, WV. Charles Town Races is one of only three similar tracks in the country currently broadcasting in HD.
Charles Town produces programming and uplinks five days a week using four HD cameras for race coverage. All camera video and other signals are fed through distribution amplifiers and then to the router, production switcher, and monitoring area.
For the Charles Town installation, Teleview selected a UTAH-400 32-frame digital router, loaded 32 x 23 HD, and a UTAH-200 32-frame analog audio router, loaded 32 x 32, along with associated control panels. While video broadcast within the Charles Town complex is now HD, the signal is converted to MPEG-compressed analog composite to save bandwidth for satellite uplink. Teleview selected the UTAH-400 for its ability to handle both SD and HD signals and for the modular architecture that allows easy expansion and further HD upgrades.
Teleview worked with Utah Scientific partner Midtown Video, of Miami, FL, and the Charles Town staff for nine months on the system design. Once requirements were determined and the equipment purchased, the system was prebuilt and tested at Teleview's headquarters in Hialeah, FL, before being delivered to its new home in West Virginia.