WETA Taps Fujinon for ‘Newshour’ in HD

WETA, the public-broadcasting station in the nation’s capital, serving Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, has installed six Fujinon HA27X6.5 ESM premium HD studio lenses. Mounted on Sony HDC-1000L cameras, they are being used to produce the PBS signature nightly news program
Newshour With Jim Lehrer from WETA studios in Washington.

To make the HD broadcast of
Newshour possible, WETA worked with Newington, VA-based system integrator Communications Engineering Inc. (CEI) to build a state-of-the-art control room and HD-optimized set. The construction, designed to enable the HD broadcast of
Newshour, is serving other areas of WETA programming as well. The facility housed HD coverage of the Democrat and Republican national political conventions, as well as that of the 2008 Presidential Election.

According to Chris Lane, WETA VP of technology and engineering, the Fujinon lenses represented a fiscally responsible choice for HD lenses that provided the utmost in quality imaging. He says the response to the look of the show since the HD upgrade has been overwhelmingly positive: “Soon after we launched the show in HD, I had the opportunity to speak to my counterparts at other PBS stations receiving the
Newshour feed. All parties were very impressed with how pristine the images are.”