Okla. ETA Chooses Utah Scientific Routing Gear

The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) has installed Utah Scientific routing equipment to anchor the infrastructure for its new Tulsa studio and office facility. OETA is the regional PBS program provider serving 1.8 million viewers a week across Oklahoma and in surrounding states.

The new plant replaces the analog/digital-hybrid Tulsa facility, and represents an upgrade to HD. Planning was a group effort and included systems integration by Digital Resources Inc.

OETA installed two Utah-400 routing switchers (one 3G HD video and one audio) to replace its Utah-300 analog router. The routing switchers are controlled by Utah Scientific’s SC-4 control system. The installation also includes Utah-100 Series 3 HD (3G), SD, analog video, digital audio, and analog audio distribution amplifiers (DAs); and two TSG-490 sync generators with automatic changeover and GPS synchronization.

“We chose the Utah-400 routers because our previous Utah router served us so well for so many years,” said Roger Newton, OETA Tulsa chief engineer. “The tight integration between the video and audio routers is also important.”

Newton also cited Utah Scientific’s sales and technical support as reasons for choosing the equipment. 

Utah Scientific’s distribution amplifiers let OETA separate master production control from the technical operations center, which occupied the same room in the old building. Now the DAs feed the video signal from the studio cameras to the video production switcher, solving the noise problems that often resulted from the previous setup.

The Utah-400 is specifically designed to address the growing requirement for large switching systems with its ability to expand seamlessly from 8×8 to 1152×1152 and beyond. The Utah-400 is based on a new matrix architecture that, the company says, reduces the complexity of large systems, resulting in improved rack space and power requirements as well as cost reductions.