Utah Scientific Selects CSP Routing Switcher For OB Truck

Utah Scientific, a worldwide leader in routing and master control switchers, has announced that CSP Mobile Productions is installing a UTAH-400/528 routing switcher into its newest outside broadcast (OB) truck.
Based in Saco, Maine, CSP Mobile Productions covers sports and entertainment video productions for regional clients as well as networks. This is CSP's third HD truck to contain Utah Scientific equipment, and the fifth in the history of its fleet.
CSP's new HD truck, HD-2, is a 53-foot expando that will cover college basketball for ESPN when the season begins in November. The truck's compact design incorporates low power consumption, integrated audio processing, and format flexibility. The UTAH-400 528x528 router handles all of CSP's needs for MADI, AES, and analog signal processing, and also fulfills a critical need for embedded audio support as mandated by the client.
"ESPN has issued a new requirement for vendors to support 16 channels of embedded audio, so the biggest selling point for us was the UTAH-400's ability to handle audio and video together," said Len Chase, president of CSP Mobile Productions. "The router is the backbone of any truck. We prefer Utah Scientific first because of its 10-year warranty, but also because it's a reliable product and a good value at the price point, and our engineers are very familiar with the Utah Scientific workflow — a factor that can save us a lot of time and money as our engineers float from truck to truck."
The UTAH-400 is specifically designed to address the growing requirement for large switching systems with its ability to expand seamlessly from 8 x 8 to 1152 x 1152 and beyond. The UTAH-400 is based on a revolutionary new matrix architecture that greatly reduces the complexity of large systems, resulting in considerable improvements in rack space and power requirements as well as significant cost reductions. The routing switcher's embedded audio capability comes courtesy of a new line of I/O boards that rely on advanced field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology to perform signal processing. Utah Scientific has built advanced signal processing into the router's I/O board, meaning it can deserialize and decode a signal into its component data streams without compromising the router's overall operational reliability. As a result, audio channels are shuffled automatically without an outboard device or manual intervention.
"CSP Mobile's most recent purchase reinforces the need for compact, low-power-consumption routers in a mobile environment, as well as the need for integrated audio processing," said Tom Harmon, president and CEO of Utah Scientific. "It also demonstrates CSP's continued confidence in Utah Scientific equipment, which is what we strive to inspire in every customer."
System integrator Little Bay Broadcasting is installing the Utah Scientific equipment for CSP Mobile Productions.
www.utahscientific.com