Utah Scientific has announced that German television production company TV Skyline has installed a UTAH-400 router in its newest HD mobile unit, the Ü5HD, which will be used to cover 2006 World Cup football in high definition.
“We chose the UTAH-400 mainly because of its ability to route HD, SD, and PAL signals within one frame,” said Wolfgang Reeh, managing director of TV Skyline. “As a mobile television production company that must manage various types of signal formats, often simultaneously, it’s important that we have that kind of flexibility in a routing system.”
TV Skyline, which owns seven mobile broadcasting units, including Ü5HD, was tapped by German pay-per-view provider Premiere to provide high definition coverage of the tournament. The Ü5HD’s UTAH-400 system will be used to handle the central distribution of all HD feeds from the games back to Premiere, which will air them live.
The 288×288 UTAH-400 serves as the Ü5HD’s main router for transmission, recording, and signal distribution. The truck also has been outfitted with Utah’s SC-4 router control system, a Snell & Wilcox Kahuna production switcher, and a Lawo audio router. All of the routing and switching is controlled by a VSM controller from Broadcast Solutions. Aside from the World Cup, the Ü5HD unit handles a diverse range of events for TV Skyline, including sports, entertainment, and news broadcasting.
