U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell Salutes JVC's DIGITAL-S
Home of the famed 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army, Fort Campell in Kentucky and
Tennessee maintains a full television production facility, producing and airing a wide variety
of programming from a 30-minute news segment to motivational programs and even music videos. Because of
economic constraints, the fort has relied on an aging S-VHS system for production and editing.
Recently, the decision was made to upgrade to DIGITAL-S. "We always wanted to achieve a higher quality level,"
stated Steve Sanderson, command visual information officer at Fort Campbell, and head of the television
production facility.
Fort Campbell has full production studio that is presently undergoing a renovation. "As a part of our
overall upgrade to our production studio, we purchased three of JVC's KY-D29 digital signal processing
camera in studio configuration," noted Sanderson. "We also do quite a bit of field acquisition around the base,
and for that we purchased two KY-D29's docked to BR-D40 DIGITAL-S field recorders. It is important for us to
obtain the highest quality raw footage for editing in our edit bays."
In addition to the studio and ENG cameras, Fort Campbell also purchased several DIGITAL-S VTR's including
one BR-D80 editing recorder, two BR-D50 feeder players, and one BR-D51 feeder player with S-VHS playback.
The ability of DIGITAL-S to interface seamlessly with existing equipment, and to play back S-VHS, was a
major factor in the decision to purchase these units. "We have a library of over 1,000 mastered S-VHS tapes that
we need to continue to use," commented Sanderson. "The BR-D51's ability to play back these tapes
was a strong motivator in our choice of JVC's DIGITAL-S."
In addition, lossless multigenerational dubbing was a factor in Fort Campbell's choice of DIGITAL-S.
"The fact that there is no generation loss in dubbing with DIGITAL-S was a big selling point," noted Sanderson.
DIGITAL-S represents a dramatic breakthrough in price and performance. JVC's 1/2-inch format offers
4:2:2 8-bit component digital resolution and very mild 3.3:1 compression, which makes the format technically
superior to any analog system and any 4:1:1 digital system. The picture quality of DIGITAL-S rivals even
the most expensive digital systems.
In fact, JVC's DIGITAL-S format is so competitive in price and performance, it was the only logical choice
for Fort Campbell. Concludes Sanderson, "Digital is the wave of the future, and DIGITAL-S provides us with
the best opportunity to move into the digital realm."
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