(Woodbury, New York--May 19, 2009) Hitachi Kokusai Electric America, Ltd., a leading provider of affordable, high performance cameras, today announced that Brigham Young University-Hawaii (BYU-Hawaii)—an accredited, four-year undergraduate institution in Laie, HI—bought four Hitachi SK-HD1000 native 1080i HDTV studio/field production cameras to produce HD programming for its website as well as for BYU Television.
BYU-Hawaii and its sister colleges BYU (in Utah) and BYU-Idaho all produce their own programming—such as entertainment, documentaries, and educational programs. These shows are seen on BYU TV, the Brigham Young University-run TV network that reaches over 50 million homes nationwide on DirecTV, Dish Network, and cable systems, and a global audience via the Internet. While most of this programming has been done in SD, BYU-Hawaii bought the Hitachi SK-HD1000’s because the demand for HD is steadily increasing.
“Because of the superior price performance of the Hitachi SK-HD1000, we’ve been able to go hi-def four years sooner than we had planned. We could not have realized our goal to go hi-def so quickly without this camera because comparable competitors were cost-prohibitive,” said Lawrence Lau, manager of TV studios for BYU-Hawaii. “Hitachi has also satisfied another key concern we had—reliability. Here in Hawaii, it’s extremely difficult to get camera parts or repairs, and many camera vendors do not support this region. But Hitachi has provided us with remarkably good service, and even rushed us parts when necessary.”
Prior to the SK-HD1000’s, BYU-Hawaii used a complement of Hitachi Z-3000W 4:3/16:9 switchable SD cameras. Lau said, “All of the technical issues with these cameras have been extremely minor, largely due to wear. Because more than four cameras are needed to cover game action effectively, these Z-3000W’s are still in service alongside our new HD cameras, and the HD video is down-converted to SD.”
The SK-HD1000’s, outfitted with 5-inch black/white viewfinders and Canon HD lenses, are usually mounted on tripods in the campus TV studio. Many educational programs are produced in the studio, such as a business management class that could be accessed on demand from the website. Switching is done using a Ross Synergy 3 switcher from the adjacent production control room.
In the field, BYU-Hawaii has used the Hitachi SK-HD1000 cameras to produce several BYU-Hawaii Seasider men’s and women’s basketball games, which were streamed on its website, as well as transferred in realtime as video over IP to BYU TV. But, in the fall, BYU-Hawaii will expand its game offerings to include Seasider women’s volleyball and men’s and women’s tennis. When shooting from remote campus locations, such as playing fields and the auditorium, two of the SK-HD1000’s are mounted on tripods and two are operated as handhelds.
“The nice thing about these cameras is that, since they’re fiber based, we can run fiber all over campus and plug the cameras in wherever we need. This makes remote shooting much easier with minimal set-up,” said Lau. “The Hitachi camera control unit (CCU) can send live HD video over distances up to 9,000 feet back to our control room. This flexibility saves us from having to invest in a mobile video unit or auxiliary studio to produce HD video from remote campus locations.”
About Brigham Young University-Hawaii
Brigham Young University-Hawaii (BYU-Hawaii) is an accredited four-year undergraduate institution with 2,400 students from more than 70 countries. BYU-Hawaii is a unique, multi-cultural campus where spiritual as well as academic learning is encouraged among the most “international” student body in the U.S. For more information, visit http://www.byuh.edu.
About Hitachi
Hitachi Kokusai Electric America, Ltd. designs, manufacturers and markets video cameras, digital transmission, processing and recording devices for the broadcast television, cable, video production, and industrial vision markets. For more information, please call (516) 921-7200 or visit Hitachi's web site at http://www.hitachikokusai.us . Hitachi Kokusai Electric, Inc., is a Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT) group company.
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