Italy’s SBP taps Kahuna for new HD OB truck

Snell & Wilcox today announced that Italy’s SBP, a leading European broadcast services company with offices in Rome, Milan, and Turin, has purchased a Kahuna SD/HD multiformat production switcher for use in a 20-camera HDTV OB vehicle.

SBP installed the new Kahuna system in the recently upgraded HD OB van to enable sophisticated mixing of sources and seamless delivery of feeds in SD and HD. Provided to SBP by systems integrator Video Progetti, this is the second Kahuna system purchased by SBP, which previously installed a full-featured Kahuna system in its flagship 24-camera HDTV OB unit.

“Purchasing a second Kahuna was an easy choice because of its high quality and intelligent design, and because our experience with Kahuna and the support we’ve received from Snell & Wilcox have been excellent,” said Sergio Nuvoloni, technical manager at SBP. “Kahuna allows our operators to work seamlessly with virtually any input, regardless of format, and to deliver an output in any broadcast standard. This gives them enormous flexibility and enables them more freedom to build dynamic live programs.”

With seamless conversion capability built into the mainframe, the Kahuna offers a high level of versatility and economy ideal for mobile production applications. It reduces the external conversion gear necessary to achieve top-quality multiformat production and, with its remarkably low delay, ensures the quality and continuity of audio and video in HD or mixed-format live production.

SBP’s Kahuna systems have already been used in the coverage of many high-profile events, such as concerts at La Scala in Milan, MotoGP races, and for Italian A League football matches. The Kahuna’s proprietary FormatFusion technology enables operators to combine SD and HD camera feeds, graphics, handheld shots, and archive footage directly into HD productions. The system also offers simultaneous HD and SD output capability from the same mainframe and control panel, enabling delivery of different feeds customized for multiple clients.

In addition to a dedicated FormatFusion engine, each Kahuna M/E bank features four keyers able to perform luma, linear, and chroma keying; five transition wipe generators; a still store and RAM recorder; RGB color correction; two utility buses; and DMEM capability. The easy-to-use yet powerful Kahuna IMPAKT suite of 3-D DVEs provides effects including spheres, slabs, zooms, warps, tiling, ripples, rolls and peels, fragmentation, lighting effects, and corner pinning — all of which can be applied in SD, HD, or both formats. IMPAKT also offers timesaving pre-made effects and the ability to work in source-based or bus-based modes, enabling both background and fill-and-key manipulation.