NEP Broadcasting chooses Cobalt Digital for ‘Daily Show,’ ‘Colbert Report’ HD transition

NEP Broadcasting has selected the Cobalt Digital line of terminal gear for the HD transition of the “Colbert Report” and “Daily Show” studios.

“We are frame-synching, color-correcting, embedding and de-embedding dozens of signals,” said George Hoover, CTO of NEP Broadcasting. The Cobalt openGear products, used with the DashBoard control and monitoring software and Cobalt OGCP-9000 remote-control panels, will enable NEP Broadcasting to control all video- and audio-processing under a common scheme, he added.

When the Cobalt equipment was installed, the studio was still shooting in SD. The downconverters were serving as distribution amplifiers, and the Cobalt 9033 A-to-D cards in the videotape room were taking SD component output from DVD players and tape decks and feeding the switcher in SD.

As the cameras switch over to HD, Cobalt 9821 downconverters will allow the studios to monitor their HD camera returns on SD monitors. For the main program out, the Cobalt 9822 downconverters provide the highest possible downconversion quality.