D-9 in Action[VIEW]

Reno's KRXI moves to
JVC's D-9 in double time

Like many small broadcasters in America, the engineers of sister stations KRXI and KAME in Reno, Nevada strategized carefully on how to choreograph their shift to digital. The wheels of change began turning in 1994 when Cox Broadcasting bought KRXI and LMA'd with KAME. The following year, Cox Broadcasting made the commitment to move to digital. As is true in many businesses, the motivating force behind the upgrade was to increase profitability. However, the management of KRXI and KAME found that with one sweeping upgrade, they could also transform the sister stations' technical strength, broadcast product, and their image in the marketplace.

The choice of D-9 was bolstered by months of research and the fact that other Cox Broadcasting stations had found great success with JVC' professional VTR's. Ultimately, station engineers were impressed by the price/performance ratio of the D-9. It was far more robust, and more economical than any of the DV formats - yet, it offered picture quality indistinguishable from other more expensive digital formats.

"Our station's management was impressed with the price and the technical superiority of D-9," said Grimm, who was instrumental in guiding the decision. "I recommended D-9 because it has extremely high quality 4:2:2 component digital sampling, mild 3.3:1 compression and robust 1/2-inch tape. The competing DV formats offer weaker 4:1:1 sampling and 5:1 compression that produces artifacts."

All in all, the transition to digital via JVC proved to be a "blueprint" for success. With groundwork laid in S-VHS, the upgrade to D-9 was gentle because JVC's BR-D51 VTR player is engineered to offer both digital capability and S-VHS playback capability. This enabled the station to preserve its extensive S-VHS library while still achieving digital 4:2:2 broadcast quality.

KRXI purchased four JVC D-9 BR-D750 editing VTRs, three of which are used for production. The station also purchased two JVC D-9 BR-D40 dockable recorders that operate with the station's existing inventory of three JVC KY-27 cameras.

The savings resulting from the sister station's economical transition to digital, allowed KRXI and KAME, to fast track the total upgrade of all of its 31 S-VHS machines to JVC's D-9. "1998 is an important year for us," Grimm stressed. "Both stations will continue to upgrade to digital with the ultimate goal of being completely digital by year's end."