Hitachi, Multidyne Brings Flexibility to CCUs

Hitachi’s SK Series of HDTV studio and field production cameras, couple with Multidyne’s advanced EOS-4000 series optical routing system, now offers complete flexibility in assigning camera heads to CCUs. This is a natural progression from Hitachi’s TCP/IP data network compliant control system, where any control panel can control any camera wherever there’s access to a LAN, WAN, MAN or internet.

The HDTV camera optical routing system will be exhibited at the Hitachi Kokusai Booth (C4309) at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters held at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas Nevada next month.

“Today’s modern stadiums, arenas, TV stations, production studios, universities, large churches and other HDTV camera installations all use digital fiber cable due to its superior ROI,:” says explained Emilio Aleman, product manager for Broadcast and Professional products at Hitachi Kokusai America. “Its low cost, ease of installation, seemingly limitless bandwidth, and ability to transport audio, data and video beyond 3Gbps make SM fiber the logical choice when deciding the cable infrastructure of a facility.

Previously, assigning camera heads to different CCUs was done manually by connecting and disconnecting fiber patch cables.

Hitachi’s unique camera and CCU signal transport design utilizes the SMPTE-311M standard. With this design, camera power and digital optical transmission can be isolated without losing any function, operational benefit or picture quality. The total fiber optic distance that can be used with any camera and CCU through the Multidyne optical router is 10Km.

With the optical routing switcher, Hitachi can maximize CCU usage and offer the ability to connect studio and portable cameras moved around a facility for different production purposes and venues.

“It’s very exciting to see the use of the EOS-4000 optical router continue to expand within the traditional broadcast market,” adds Fred Scott, Vice President of Sales & Business Development for MultiDyne.

Existing and new fiber infrastructures can be utilized to increase flexibility, offering multiple camera locations all linked via fiber back to the optical routing switcher. The optical router switches the two fibers from each camera and ensures that the SMPTE signal formats are maintained and assigns each camera to the desired CCU.

Any number of cameras and CCU units can be configured with the optical router. The router is easily controlled via a standard PC, Crestron or AMX control system.  Installations involving multiple studios and groups of cameras in each studio can share a common set of CCUs and control panels at the control room, saving the user substantial costs in equipment (CCU’s + control panels).