Sky News To Deliver HD News With Grass Valley

BSkyB’s Sky News is building a state-of-the-art high-definition production control room, based around a new Grass Valley Kayenne Video Production Center and two Grass Valley K2 Summit Production Client servers.
The highly rated news channel is also building a new production studio and will outfit it with 12 new Grass Valley LDK 8000 Elite WorldCam multiformat HD cameras.
BSkyB will use the Grass Valley HD production equipment for Sky News' coverage of the UK’s upcoming General elections, when it will become the first mainstream news channel in the country to broadcast in HD.
"As we intend to be the first news channel to go HD in the UK, we wanted to make sure we had the right equipment in place to make a significant impact in the history of news television," said Jon Bennett, Head of Studio Output at Sky News. "The performance and reliability of Grass Valley’s equipment has served us well in the past, and we look forward to many more years of fruitful cooperation with this new installation."
Sky News is also using several Grass Valley K2 Summit servers, which will work seamlessly with the Kayenne switcher, integrating directly into the switcher’s control system. This will allow the immediate update of banners, straps and graphics enabling Sky to continually refresh the on-air presentation in a dynamic manner not previously possible.
"BSkyB has long been a pioneer of production technology and this move to HD news with Sky News is another in a long line of firsts for the organization, many of which we have been proud to support," said Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Grass Valley. "The new Kayenne switcher, HD cameras, and K2 Summit HD servers will serve Sky News well and allow it to produce a wide variety of projects at the highest quality HD resolutions possible. This latest HD news project is going to be a huge success on a number of fronts."
The Grass Valley Kayenne Video Production Center is a family of powerful, highly modular production switchers, with 1.5 M/Es to 4.5 M/Es. Grass Valley DoubleTake split M/E technology effectively increases the available M/Es to 10. The modular control panel is designed for easy expansion and service, incorporating many new tools designed to increase operators’ ability to manage the live production workload.
The LDK 8000 Elite WorldCam of cameras features three next-generation 9.2-million pixel HD-DPM+ sensors, and is the only camera available that can capture true progressive HD images natively and switch instantly among multiple formats and frame rates. The highly flexible cameras are switchable between the 1080i and 720p HD formats and support all 1080p standard formats, including 1080p50 and 1080p60.
The Grass Valley K2 Summit platform combines the best in broadcast and IT capabilities to deliver unmatched audio and video processing plus high-speed networking and robust storage to ensure all video is accurately accessed, edited and played out. Facilities can choose a K2 system to fit their own production and workflow needs, selecting from among several building blocks: a K2 Media Server, K2 Media Client(s), one or more network switches, and K2 SAN storage. The K2 system also includes AppCenter software, which features a powerful, easy-to-use interface for file management, transport control, and configuration.
(KMcA/BMcc)