Independent station group Liberty Corp. has purchased a range of Snell & Wilcox IQ Modular intelligent infrastructure products and HD5200 upconverters to help get its 15 television stations on the air in digital. The new gear, which enables analog-to-digital conversion, signal upconversion and networked control and monitoring, has been installed in 11 of the 15 Liberty properties thus far.
Liberty Corp. is getting its affiliate stations on the air in digital cost-effectively with the compact Snell & Wilcox HD5200 upconverter.
The compact 3RU Snell & Wilcox IQ Modular systems delivered to date are installed in single- rack DTV solutions designed for each station by Eric Bergman, chief engineer at Liberty-owned station WTOL-TV in Toledo, OH. Bergman and his engineering team came to Snell & Wilcox looking for a cost-effective way to get on the air with DTV quickly.
What they have designed for each facility is a digital island that will operate alongside the stations’ existing analog infrastructure. Audio and video synchronization is maintained during the video decode and upconversion process by automated tracking delays. After a signal passes through the IQ Modular system, it is sent to the HD5200 for upconversion and then moves on to the HD master control switcher. The IQ Modular enclosures and HD5200s are networked with Snell & Wilcox’s RollCall infrastructure management system and managed from computer stations for device control and monitoring of the signal flow.
“One integral feature of the HD5200 is its accommodation of vertical interval data that is carried in standard and high definition video,” Bergman said. “This means that a video source with data on line 21 is transposed onto the HD output. Other systems tested did not afford this luxury and required a separate unit to transpose this data. The HD5200 takes care of audio delay steering, video and ancillary data in one platform.”
The Snell & Wilcox gear is currently installed or in the process of being added at other Liberty Corp. TV stations.
For more information visit www.snellwilcox.com.
