The Home Shopping Network (HSN) is continuing its move to digital at its St. Petersburg, FL, studios. According to Noley Keener, HSN’s vice president, TV engineering, in addition to the twelve Sony BVP-E10 digital studio camera systems, a new SDI infrastructure, upgraded production switchers (three Sony DVS-7350s upgraded to SDI), routers, fiber, and other digital equipment purchased last year, HSN is purchasing 10 additional E10s this year and planning on an additional 10 E10s next year.
“We selected the Sony studio cameras because they offer incredible performance capabilities,” said Michelle Wilkins, director of TV engineering for HSN. “Other studio cameras we looked at simply didn’t have the functionality we need.”
As part of the move to digital, HSN will upgrade its Chyron Aprisa 200 DDR from 7-in/7-out channels to 11-in/11-out with just over 2TB of storage. The system will be tied to HSN’s post-production center, equipped with two Discreet Smokes, a Discreet Frost, and an online editing system based around a Sony DVS-6000 switcher. As part of the DDR expansion, HSN will upgrade its Pro-Bel router from 256 x 128 to 256 x 192.
The upgrade, to be completed by HSN’s 26 studio and uplink engineers by 2004, will have the network fully digital, from cameras to uplink.
