KUSA Flying
High
with HDTV Upgrade
by Ken
Freed.
.
Denver
NBC affiliate is Sony beta site for digital rollout by
Gannett.
A rebuilt studio set for
HDTV newscasts. Seven new HDTV studio cameras; a
prototype HDTV mini-cam on a robotic boom jib; a new HDTV
digital switcher and router; an innovative custom-built
HDTV helicopter &emdash; what else could any local
station desire?
With new digital equipment installed, KUSA-TV in
Denver was ready for its April 29 launch of HDTV local
newscasts. Not only was the NBC affiliate the first
Gannett-owned station in America to begin HDTV news
broadcasting, but 9News was the first local operation to
go live with Sony HDTV equipment.
"We were facing a 'chicken-and-egg' scenario two years
ago," said KUSA President and General Manager Roger
Ogden, who is also a senior vice president of Gannett
with five stations reporting to him. "We saw that there
was not enough digital content being produced because
there were not enough digital receivers being sold,
because there was not enough content being produced. We
decided to break the logjam."
Ogden said he could see the situation was on the verge
of changing in late 2002. "The price-point for digital
receivers was starting to come down at the same time the
networks were being pushed by affiliates to offer more
HDTV programming that would draw audiences beyond the
early adopters, like the sports fans," he said.
So, the Denver broadcast veteran successfully pitched
to Gannett the idea of making Denver an HDTV beta test
site for the national chain.
"We do this with a lot of endeavors," he noted. "The
idea is to get one to three stations to try something new
in their markets, and then see what happens." Denver was
ideal for the project, Ogden told Gannett, because the
metro area's demographics skew affluent; according to the
Consumer Electronic Association more than of 12,000 local
homes already had HDTV receivers. With advertising
commitments from Comcast digital cable and a local
consumer electronics retailer, SoundTrack, Gannett
approved the effort.
EXACTING
STANDARDS
In early 2003, KUSA approached Sony Electronics about
a test site for its HD equipment becoming. "We already
had a long and satisfying relationship with Sony," said
Don Perez, KUSA director of technology and operations.
"It made sense to take the model we'd already developed
with Sony for SD broadcasting and apply it to HD."
During summer meetings in Denver and Sony's offices in
Park Ridge, N.J., they addressed the technical challenges
facing 9News.
"Don Perez has some pretty exacting standards," said
Robert Willox, general manager of content creation for
Sony's broadcast and production systems division. "He
purchased very appropriate HD gear, but not necessarily
the 'best of breed' or the most esoteric. He wanted a
balance between functionality and cost-effectiveness that
still delivers great image quality at the end of the
day."
Heading the equipment list were seven Sony HDC-930
HDVS portable studio cameras that capture 1080i HDTV
images on a 2/3-inch 2.2 million "square" pixel CCD. The
cameras also can capture SDTV images in 480i in 16:9
aspect ratio or 576i in 4:3 mode. The HDC-930 cameras
feature 12-bit A/D conversion and an advanced digital
signal processor (ADSP). Picture quality is further
improved by a signal-to-noise ratio of 54 dB. Mounted on
these cameras are Canon 17.7X7 HD lenses. The studio
cameras sit on Vinten robotic tripod pedestals, said
Perez, yet the newscast operation also needed a smaller
camera to mount on a Vinten jib arm that could run on
autopilot from preselected menus.
Sony stepped up by offering exclusively to 9News the
first prototype of the new HDC-X300 compact
high-definition camera, which just debuted at NAB2004.
With a body about the same size as the lens, the HDC-X300
is the first Sony HD camera to contain three half-inch
1.5- megapixel CCDs. Designed partly for studio
automation, the camera's other applications include
point-of-view (POV) acquisition in the field,
large-screen projection, and 24p cinematography. Shipping
in July, the camera will sell for less than $20,000.
"The resolution of the X300 is a bit less than the 930
camera," Perez said, "but it's worth it to get a good
camera that weighs only two pounds onto the end of a jib.
With a wide-angle Canon lens, we can cover the entire
news set."
STUDIO
A
The cameras were installed in Studio A, a
5,000-square-foot space the same size as Studio B, which
had been used for morning, afternoon, evening and
late-night newscasts while Studio A was being rebuilt for
HDTV. About 18,000 square feet of space is devoted to
production within the relatively new 108,000-square-foot
KUSA building designed by Rees Associates that sits on
Speer Boulevard within a half-mile of KMGH (ABC), KCNC-TV
(CBS) and KRMA (PBS).
Studio A now features a raised platform with a wider
desk able to handle widescreen shots of the two news
anchors, along with the weather and sports reporters. Off
to one side is a new Sony LMD170WS 17-inch, multi-format,
16:9 LCD monitor.
Within the control room for Studio A, Sony upgraded
the MVS8000 multiformat switcher processor, purchased two
years ago in preparation for the move to HD. Running in
SD mode since acquisition, the switcher is now configured
to handle both standard- and high-definition digital
video.
Mounted into the walls of the reconfigured control
room are rows of Sony LMD230WS 23-inch multiformat,
widescreen LCD monitors, as well as an array of Sony
PVM9L3 8-inch HR Trinitron CRT monitors with 450-line
resolution. These screens are used to track all the video
coming from studio cameras, ENG crews, the Avid edit
suites, the 9News helicopter, the national NBC feeds and
the broadcast antenna signals from atop Lookout Mountain
west of Denver.
At the heart of KUSA's internal digital network is a
new ultracompact Sony HDSX5800 22RU multi bit-rate
router. With up to 264 inputs and 272 outputs, the router
can handle almost every SD or HD format within ATSC,
operating at speeds from 143 Mbps up to 1.5 Gbps. The
router is designed to complement the Sony MVS/ DVS series
production switchers.
HD
CHOPPER
While both Ogden and Perez seem excited about the new
HDTV news set, a special lilt comes into their voices
when they talk about the innovative HDTV helicopter
developed for KUSA by MRC and Helinet, which was
exhibited at NAB. Joining the design team were members
from Sony, Tiernan, NEL, Tandberg Television, Pinnacle
and Ikegami. The team met in Denver through most of last
summer.
Ogden gave special credit to Helinet President Alan
Purwin for developing a way to mount an HDTV camera on
conductive gimbals that directly feed the video signal to
the transmitter onboard the Eurocopter AStar 350
aircraft.
"Inventing a way to reliably transmit HD to a station
up to 60 miles away from a helicopter flying at 100 mph
was a truly pioneering effort," said Perez. The solution
developed by MRC and the multivendor team involved an
8-30 MHz microwave beam at 20 Mbps in bandwidth allocated
by the FCC.
With all these elements in place, Ogden said, the last
hurdle before the April 29 launch was convincing the news
talent that with the new Sony HD cameras and the new Kino
Flo lighting system, "they actually look much better than
they expected."
"KUSA already had a very good on-air look in SD,"
Wilcox said. "The station did not want to scrimp or
compromise when they converted to HD. Now I believe the
video quality at the station can compete with anyone in
America. 
.
