Hitachi Showcases Z-HD5000 Camera

By Carolyn Braff

The highlight of Hitachi’s NAB Show booth (C4310) is the new Z-HD5000 portable HDTV studio and EFP camera.

“It’s the little baby brother of the SK-HD1000, which is our flagship camera,” says Sean Moran, Hitachi national sales manager for broadcast and professional products. “It has the same body style in a two-piece dockable camera with ⅔-in., 3 CCD, and a 1.1 million-pixel sensor.”

With native scan in 1080i/59.94 or 1080i/50, the camera features the same types of lenses, accessories, and mechanical interface as the HD1000 and is dockable to a fiber system, P2 recorder, HD wireless system, and digital triax.

“We’ve adapted the system so we can break it out to single-mode fiber,” Moran adds. “For a lot of college-sports applications, colleges want to go with the SMPTE hybrid fiber to the drop, and then they want to break it out to single-mode fiber. There is a big cost saving there when you take it across campus.”

To enable that, Hitachi is able to convert to single-mode fiber.

“Two single-mode strands will give us all the video, return video, intercom, and remote control, and we figured out a way to handle power as well,” Moran says. “That is an extremely popular application for colleges.”

Buffalo State University has already implemented the system, and four additional universities, members of the Southeastern Conference, may be signed on by the time NAB comes to a close.

Lightweight to allow operators to use the camera on the shoulder, the Z-HD5000 also features a five preset speeds on the CCD shutter and an automatic exposure system (AES) that maintains the video level with a fixed-lens F-stop.