KCTS Broadcasting recently replaced their 34 traditional monitors to 3 Christie DLP® projection cubes without losing any control or information. Gaining flexibility, operators are able to adjust the size, and number, of the windows displaying different feeds according to their importance.
The Control Room Solution
The arrival of Digital Television (DTV) is promised to be the most significant technological development in television broadcasting since color TV debuted over fifty years ago. DTV technology is capable of delivering clearer, sharper more cinematic images with multi-channel CD-quality sound and the ability to broadcast HDTV programming at more than twice the resolution of standard television in wide-screen format. The highly anticipated arrival of high-definition television (HDTV) for every viewer on every channel across the United States is approaching fast. The Federal Communications Commission has issued a mandate that all commercial and non-commercial broadcasting stations are to transition to DTV by 2003. As a result, broadcasters are altering their business plans and adding new digital transmitters and equipment in an effort to become digitally ready.
In Seattle, public broadcasting station KCTS has been steadily converting to DTV since 1994. KCTS is the largest public television station in the Pacific Northwest serving 2.1 million U.S. and Canadian viewers. It is also one of the first television stations to purchase HDTV production equipment, and in 1997 the station became the first public broadcaster to go on the air with the new ATSC digital transmission system. With DTV, KCTS is able to provide viewers educational and cultural programming at a higher quality and quantity with added data that can be downloaded for programming that offers unparalleled clear pictures and sound. During the day, KCTS uses its digital channel to broadcast three separate programming streams. In the evening, the station utilizes almost the entire digital bandwidth to broadcast KCTS-produced HDTV programming.
DTV created many new opportunities for the public broadcaster, which in turn brought several new challenges. When KCTS got its digital transmitter on the air, the station was presented with the need to look after another programming stream in high definition.
Along with the digital transmission, KCTS picked up some auxiliary channels and within the last five years the station also picked up a free cable channel. Presented with many more programming streams to look after, but unable to accommodate them with existing facilities, KCTS made the decision to update its master control to complete the transition to digital content.
“We didn’t have enough switchers, hands or buttons to handle all the new programming streams,” says Clifford Anderson, director of operations and engineering, KCTS. “The technology we were using was analog so part of the campaign was to bring the master control up to date. We’re now capable of handling five independent streams that we can program and feed separately. There’s more to look at and a lot more to take care of so we had to change the monitoring system as well.”
KCTS hired Harris Corporation’s Harris Broadcast Communication Division based in Mason, Ohio. A leader in providing digital and analog solutions for television broadcasting, Harris Broadcast designed and built a new digital master control with automation to handle all the new programming streams. Walls had to be knocked down and a room that was once used to store old equipment became a high tech control room dominated by an impressive virtual monitor wall.
The new wall uses Avitech International’s virtual monitor wall modules that enable the display of numerous real-time scalable images on three 50-inch GraphXMASTER C50 Wall Display Cubes by Christie. With the new technology, KCTS is able to easily control, organize and view multiple programming streams at once.
KCTS first saw the Avitech virtual monitor wall in action at another nearby broadcast facility. Very impressed with the flexibility that the Avitech technology provided, KCTS knew that they wanted to integrate it into their plans for their own digital master control. The search for digital monitors was concluded with a visit at a show presented by Christie where KCTS saw the Christie GraphXMASTER C50 Cubes featuring one-chip DLP technology, and impressed by their color and clarity, decided on these digital displays.
Christie’s GraphXMASTER C50 Cubes are purposely designed to capture all the digital benefits offered by DLP technology for display wall solutions. Offering a resolution of 1024x768, the GraphXMASTER is able to project finely detailed data with superb image sharpness and reliability.
“DTV is revolutionizing the way viewers will experience television broadcasts by providing brilliant crisp images and Christie is pleased to be a part of the revolution,” says Jim Gavloski, senior product manager for Control Room Solutions, Christie Digital Systems. “The GraphXMASTER Cubes have been carefully designed and constructed to provide high-quality digital images that broadcast stations can depend on to generate impressive virtual monitor walls to display information critical to providing viewers superior high definition programming.”
Daryl Niederbaumer of Harris Broadcast was the Design Engineer for the KCTS installation. Working closely with KCTS, he drew up the design of the master control with details on the room layout and where each piece of equipment would be placed down to the last wire. KCTS had a strong idea of what they wanted with the master control room, especially in terms of the virtual monitor wall. It was up to Harris to achieve KCTS’ vision.
KCTS’ former analog master control was very much like all other master controls with a rectangular shape, straight counter and a wall of fourteen nine-inch and eighteen six-inch black and white monitors with just two nineteen-inch color monitors in the middle. A small black and white monitor in the control room represented every tape machine and every camera used in the station.
“We were constantly replacing or repairing the nine-inch monitors and a lot of the information on the wall was meaningless,” says Anderson. “We wanted to change that. We wanted to be able to present to the operator only what’s important.”
With Avitech technology, KCTS was able to reduce the number of monitors from 34 to just three 50-inch Christie wall display cubes and three 34-inch color monitors without losing any important information. The Avitech technology enables KCTS to display multiple windows of varying sizes on each Christie Digital cube monitor. Master control operators typically rely on six 17-inch display windows and about four smaller nine-inch windows displayed on each cube in high definition color. These operators are able to adjust the size of the windows displaying different feeds according to their importance. With the ability to bring up any of the 40 inputs at the station to the main monitors and configure them in size and aspect ratio, KCTS operators have greater flexibility.
“The original analog master control with its multiple racks of monitors was a standard for many broadcasting facilities and once the monitors were placed, it was pretty much set in stone where and how programming would be seen by operators,” says Daryl Niederbaumer, systems engineer, Harris Broadcast. “With a virtual monitor wall, operators can now display multiple configurations of programming based on the multiple channels they’re broadcasting. The ability to manipulate the images makes it extremely versatile.”
KCTS runs about four off-air channels that they program, which they wanted to have front and center on the monitoring wall. By looking at the center display, operators are able to monitor the quality of the images coming back from cable, digital television and satellite feeds. The left-hand display is used to monitor feed coming from the switcher, the studio and various other outputs. The right hand screen is used to watch the satellite feeds and tape machines that the operator might want to go to as well as for quality control.
KCTS is enjoying the many advantages that they’ve discovered with the new digital master control and virtual monitor wall.
“The master control operators like the virtual monitor wall because we’ve gotten rid of the confusion and the maintenance operators don’t have to constantly fix nine-inch monitors,” says Anderson. “I’m pleased with the fact that the DLP cubes aren’t going to age as CRT monitors do through phosphor burning and we’re not going to be fighting color balance and drift everyday.”
Harris Broadcast is seeing a lot of broadcasting stations change and upgrade their facilities to digital technology, but this was the first time the integration group participated in designing and installing a virtual monitor wall.
“We find there are a lot of stations completely re-doing their master control to accept multiple channels of serial digital and high definition,” says Niederbaumer. “There are others that are just adding a small amount of gear to make them FCC compliant and on the air in HD. Those that are re-doing their facilities are now often asking for virtual monitor walls.”