[SBE] HD Pool Feeds

[Adrienne Abbott]

Gibson--
We do a number of pool feeds for our stations here in Nevada and face a
similar problem. About a third of our stations broadcast their news in HD,
the others are SD. Right now, we feed SD in the wide-screen format (1080i).
However, I expect the real problem will come in the future as our stations
upgrade to HD and we try to find a common format that works with the higher
quality equipment used by the PBS stations as well as the commercial grade
equipment everyone else uses. I particularly see future problems related to
live closed captioning and Spanish translations with live closed captioning,
especially with the changes in closed captioning requirements for Spanish
language stations next year.

We went with a professional production company for the Governor's State of
the State address earlier this year and that minimized the problems but
that's not always a practical choice, especially when it comes to court
shoots. The gov is thinking about doing a short, statewide address next
month and while we will parcel out the work to our individual stations who
will contribute staff, cameras, mics, a console and a satellite truck,
(Nevada Broadcasters pays for the sat time) in the end, our stations will
all have complaints about picture and audio quality. However, they will
still take the feed because even with their contributions, it's still less
expensive than having each station send their own equipment and crews to the
Capitol in Carson City. The pool concept is alive and well. 

Adrienne Abbott

-----Original Message-----
From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org] On Behalf Of Gibson
Prichard
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2011 4:22 AM
To: sbe at sbe.org
Subject: [SBE] HD Pool Feeds

In markets where some or all of the local TV stations have moved to HD 
newscasts, what are broadcasters doing about their pool feed equipment? 
In my market (Nashville), two of the stations are HD and the other two 
probably will be joining us soon, however, the lowest common denominator 
for pool feeds (courtrooms, funerals, etc) is still analog NTSC. We all 
have audio & video mult boxes that handle analog signals to give feeds 
to the other stations. As we all move toward HD, I can imagine wanting 
to migrate these pools to HD, but I haven't seen any ruggedized portable 
HD-SDI distribution amplifiers for pool situations. What are the other 
cities doing? How do you handle the 720p versus 1080i question - do you 
just DA it in whatever resolution the pool camera is and let the other 
stations deal with cross-converting it? Do you have embedded audio or do 
you leave audio separate, like we did with NTSC? Surely we can begin to 
abandon NTSC when all the parties deal with HD footage, can't we?

Thanks,
Gibson Prichard
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