WLS-TV taps JVC ProHD

WLS-TV, the ABC owned station in Chicago, IL and the third largest market in the country has purchased 2 JVC GY-HD250U ProHD cameras for live HD microwave remotes from the station’s ENG mobile vans.

“We’ve equipped two of our HD ready ENG vans with JVC GY-HD250 cameras for live remotes,” said Kal Hassan, Vice President and Director of Engineering at WLS-TV. “We utilize a Miranda ASI Bridge to convert the live 720 60p 19.7Mbs MPEG-2 transport stream from the JVC cameras 1394 port to ASI then feed our digital microwave transmitters in the truck for transmission to the station where we decode back to HDSDI for production. This provides an affordable solution for live HD remotes since the camera not only produces native 1280×720 60p HD video but also has a built in HD encoder for transmission.”

“With its new integrated broadcast HDTV encoder the GY-HD250 is uniquely qualified to affordably allow broadcasters to replace SDTV standup remotes with superb HDTV,” said Lawrence Librach, Assistant Vice President, Business Development, Broadcast & Entertainment, JVC Professional Products Company. “And with the newly developed 14bit Wideband Front End the GY-HD250 provides a new standard of performance for HDV cameras.”

On January 6th, WLS-TV became the first station in the Chicago area to broadcast its local news programming in HD. Committed to providing its viewers with the highest quality programming, WLS-TV has upgraded its entire local news operation, which further supports the station’s ranking in the number one position in local news since March 1986. The station produces local programs such as ABC7 News, 190 North, Chicagoing, Tapestry, and People, Places and Things You Should Know.