SNY Takes the Field With Plura

NEW YORK—SportsNet New York (SNY), the official television home of the New York Mets and New York Jets, covers the New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania regions and is also available nationally on cable packages. We recently moved from midtown Manhattan to a new studio in the 4 World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. As part of the move, we included 90 new and existing Plura monitors ranging from 9 inches to 55 inches.

We began using Plura almost nine years ago. The experience since has been nothing short of bright, with years on end without an issue. Our stock of 46-inch and 55-inch multiviewers, 32-inch program and preview displays, and 17-inch and 19-inch QC monitors must match exactly over time and the Plura displays have proven themselves project after project.

SNY has installed Plura monitors throughout their new facility at 4 World Trade Center.

CALIBRATION CAPABILITIES
The Plura monitors have proven as the standard for our facility. Edit rooms, graphic rooms and control rooms are fully outfitted to meet the demanding broadcast needs.

Plura Monitoring & Timing solutions are used extensively throughout the facility and control rooms to provide consistent SMPTE-calibrated colorimetry and intelligent MTDoE (Multi-Time Display over Ethernet) technology. MTDoE, an exclusive studio-timer solution, was developed and designed by Plura to deliver a reliable, accurate and feature-rich system.

Selection of the Plura displays and MTDoE was not difficult as Plura products offered the performance we were looking for and the product support history confirmed by other installations in the marketplace. For example, we selected the operator-friendly Plura SPT Studio Production Timer because it can be configured at any workspace, offers swift implementation using an Ethernet infrastructure, is PoE capable and can sync to NTP as a reference source.

Plura offers the PSC-400/500 free remote control application, which is designed to control a large number of Plura monitors in multiple locations via a TCP/IP interface. It can create and edit a system control map for all Plura monitors in the facility that are connected to our network.

TEST & MEASUREMENT
I’ve seen other companies add a variety of test tools to their monitors, but the resulting purchases proved to be low quality and didn’t offer many advantages. In general, waveform monitors ensure proper exposure (no clipping), black level and gamma. Many video attributes can be corrected in post applications, but getting the camera exposure correct goes a long way in reducing the time spent correcting the images later.

Plura monitors feature excellent rasterization, ensuring very usable waveforms, while also offering the ability to present SDI data in a textual format. This helps QC ensure the connected camera is operating properly. The monitors also provide audio bar graph displays and can monitor any of the 16 embedded audio signals through an earpiece.

Plura has every type of monitor you need from an economy application to the highest end. The price points and feature sets run the gamut from top to bottom. You can always find a fit for Plura in your facility.

Alex Blanding is vice president of engineering for SportsNet New York. He can be contacted atablanding@sny.tv.

For more information, please visit www.plura.tvor call 602-944-1044.