WCIV Delivers Local HD With JVC Cameras

Allbritton-owned ABC affiliate WCIV Charleston, S.C. (DMA 98), is making the move to local HD news with ProHD cameras from JVC Professional Products Co., a division of JVC Americas Corp. The station has purchased 11 GY-HM790U and six GY-HM750U cameras, which will be used for studio and ENG operations.

According to Billy Kalenda, WCIV director of engineering and operations, the station went live with four GY-HM790Us in the studio in July. The cameras are connected via fiber optic cable, avoiding the need for triax and additional cable bundles. Kalenda said the cameras, which were first used in SD mode, deliver very good picture quality and were transitioned to HD in September.

Allbritton recently standardized on JVC ProHD cameras for studio and ENG at six of its stations, part of an overall transition to local HD news production for all stations in the group. Jim Church, Allbritton director of technology, said the group needed to find a new technology partner once it began planning its HD upgrade.

“We had specific things that we needed from our cameras, we had specific workflows in mind. The image quality was critical,” he explained. “At the end of it all, we only found one vendor. It was JVC.”

With its three, 1/3-inch progressive scan CCDs, the GY-HM790U produces 1280×720 and 1920×1080 images, and its proprietary MPEG-2 encoder supports 1080i, 720p, and SD (480i) for operations that have not yet made the move to HD.