by MTN Chief Engineer, Jim Derks
MTN's pipe dream is about to become reality. What I am referring to is the 4 inch pipe MTN owns in the Stone Arch bridge accross the Mississippi River. Although the reality is not what originally was envisioned for the pipe, it still provides a timely resource for MTN's users and viewers.
The original vision was that the pipe would be used for fiber optic communication across the river by MTN and others. It was the vision of the past executive director, Tony Riddle, that the pipe would be used by MTN to relocate playback at Saint Anthony Main, by providing a fiber optic communication link across the river to Paragon's headend. Also, the excess capacity, both bandwidth, fibers and space, could be leased to others as an additional revenue source to MTN. This revenue source was envisioned as becoming quite substantial as the information age shifts into high gear.
That was the dream, the reality is the obstacles to getting in the pipe leasing business are quite formidable. After receiving several inquiries about the pipe, our executive director, Pam Colby, decided that the needs of MTN could best be served by selling the pipe and using the money to purchase badly needed
replacement cameras for our 12-year-old Studio A cameras. A bid of $60,000 was subsequently received and accepted from Sterling Technology. The conduit originally cost MTN $25,000 two years ago, which is a pretty good return of an investment..
After researching the many cameras available in this price range, I am
recommending to the equipment committee that we purchase Sony's DXC-D30 cameras. The equipment committee will be meeting some time in September to finalize the selection. The Sony DXC-D30 is an epoch-making digital video camera designed as the top-end model for professionals. Incorporating Sony's latest DSP (Digital Signal Processing) technology based on the TruEye process, the DXC-D30 realizes the faithful color reproduction never experienced with conventional analog and digital cameras. On top of that,drastic smear reduction and high sensitivity achieved by the newly
developed Power HAD CCD provide more shooting opportunities, while maintaining the high picture quality." Couldn't have said it better myself. This statement was taken from the brochure on the D30 camera.
Actually, the D30 camera is Sony's replacement for its 537's which are in
MTN's Van 2. Some of the features that the camera has are: 850 line of horizontal resolution (750 line for the current Z-31 in the studio) for a sharper picture; A signal to noise ratio of 63 db (Z-31's 58db) for cleaner quieter picture less snow in low light conditions; A newly developed digital circuits that reduce the aliasing phenomenon, the picture movement along sharp diagonal edges; High stability and uniformity, the picture tone is stringently kept uniform among multiple D30's, great for matching camera shots in the studio; Skin detail
correction which gives the subject a pleasing complexion with softer image
in the facial area; High sensitivity of F11.0 (at 2000 Lx) and a minimum of 0.5 Lx for those dark audience shots; Intelligent auto iris, when a subject is framed in a situation with extremely bright lighting against a dark background, the intelligent auto iris system detects the lighting condition in the frame and adjusts the lens iris to the optimum exposure.
These are but a few of the many new features found in this camera, and if
accepted by the equipment committee, it should make a big improvement in the
pictures coming out of studio A this fall.
YES! I want to keep community TV strong in my neighborhood! I have enclosed:
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Please enclose this response card with your tax-deductible gift and mail today to MTN,
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