CBS Sports taps Utah Scientific

CBS Sports is using Utah Scientific master control and routing gear for a new prototype HD sports coordination room that was recently used for the NCAA 2006 Men’s Basketball tournament.

CBS has nine SD sports coordination rooms, which it uses to
coordinate the switching and routing operations of concurrent games
and pre-game shows throughout the country, as well as for commercial
insertion. CBS considers its new room a prototype for its HD sports
broadcasting and has plans to transition all of the SD rooms to HD as well.

“Utah Scientific developed the MC-2020 HD and UTAH-400 HD with the
needs of broadcasters like CBS in mind,” said Tom Harmon, chief
executive officer, Utah Scientific. “Both of these products were
designed to facilitate the transition from SD to HD operations, and
we are extremely proud that CBS Sports will be using them for its new
HD sports broadcasting initiative.”

Both the MC-2020 HD and UTAH-400 HD were designed to provide an easy
upgrade path from analog to SD to HD operations as well as the
ability to perform complex switching operations.

CBS Sports installed the Utah Scientific MC-2020 HD master control
switcher in the new room in conjunction with the UTAH-400 HD routing
switcher. The 64×64 UTAH-400 sits in front of the dual-channel
MC-2020, allowing CBS to increase the sources available to the
MC-2020 as needed. The MC-2020 features four keyers per channel, as
well as audio board kits for each channel for use with both separate
AES and embedded audio. The UTAH-400 features four programmable
router control panels for controlling auxiliary/utility busses, along
with redundant power supplies, crosspoint cards, and controller cards.

The MC-2020 comes standard with a fast commercial breakaway feature,
particularly useful for large broadcasters such as CBS, to coordinate
the insertion of regional commercials quickly within one game
broadcast for different parts of the country. The UTAH-400,
meanwhile, features a scalable matrix architecture that allows users
to expand from 8×8 to 64×64, all the way up to 1152×1152.