NAB Event News
Broadcast Pix Unveils Slate 5000
By
Apr 15, 2008 - 4:44:00 PM

Broadcast Pix unveiled for the first time at NAB the Slate 5000, an all-in-one studio that may look like a switcher, but provides much more than just switcher capabilities.

“What’s unique about all of our products is that it’s a lot of devices in one,” explains Ken Swanton, president of Broadcast Pix. “That’s what’s fueled the growth of our company - people just wanted bigger ones.”

The Slate 5000 is the company’s biggest (and highest-end) device to date, and comes standard with a 2 M/E switcher, multi view, clip store, still store and character generator.

“You can do everything right from here,” Swanton says. “You don’t need to buy a separate character generator or a separate clip store. You can bring in your own graphics externally, like you can with any other switcher, or it has one built in. It has the ability to do both.”

Priced at $40,000 in HD, the Slate 5000 is set to ship next month and was designed with the sports market in mind.

“Particularly in sports, where you have a lot of cameras, we expanded it so that they could get more cameras and more complex views,” Swanton explains.

Swanton says that there are no other switchers currently available that can talk files, further differentiating the Slate 5000 from its competitors.

Also available from Broadcast Pix is the low-end version, the Slate 100 HD. Priced at $10,995 in SD and $14,400 in HD, the small-scale version uses a touch screen and a customized keyboard for extreme ease of use that has everyone from high school football programs to major networks putting it to work.

“Some of the largest networks are interested for low-cost solutions for webcasting and such,” Swanton says. “It still has all the same elements of the larger version, the clip store, the character generator, all on a small scale with a touch screen.”