A Unified Hybrid Recorder: Combining Hard Disk Drives, Betacam SX, and Analog Betacam

The transition of the broadcast industry to an all-digital environment for the operation of television news programming poses some unique challenges. Harnessing the best of contemporary digital compression technology with an efficient total video/audio data rate that supports higher quality (than the best of current analog ENG systems) while also facilitating novel new networked system concepts (that introduce crucial new efficiencies to the total broadcast news operation), formed a core design imperative. This new high-speed digital system streamlines the production of broadcast news to service the existing analog NTSC service, but also fully anticipates the imminent 4:2:0 MPEG-2 SDTV digital U.S. broadcasting standard by being squarely based on the 4:2:2 digital component signal format. At the same time, the recognition that broadcasters must transition at their own pace — oftentimes in incremental steps spanning some years — dictates a system approach that assigns an equally high priority to maintenance of a crucial compatibility with the predominantly component analog Betacam environment (presently the mainstay of ENG acquisition and news program editing).

Print ISSN

0036-1682

Published

1997-09

Content type

Information

DOI

10.5594/J04533