Sinclair Broadcast Group Standardizes on Kahuna SD/HD Production Switcher for HD News Upgrade

April 29, 2008

Source: Snell & Wilcox

Snell & Wilcox today announced that Sinclair Broadcast Group (SBG), one of largest and most diversified television broadcasters in the United States, is standardizing on the Snell & Wilcox Kahuna SD/HD multiformat production switcher across its news-producing stations as they transition to HD news production.

SBG, which operates 58 television stations in the United States, will initially deploy Kahuna switchers at a variety of its stations in Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. These stations include affiliates of the ABC, CBS, and FOX networks.

"The Kahuna has an excellent performance record in many existing news production installations, and in terms of value, we feel it brings a lot to the table," said Del Parks, vice president of engineering and operations for Sinclair Broadcast Group. "The combination of flexible SD/HD format handling and powerful effects capabilities makes the Kahuna a good fit for our stations' transition to HD news production."

Kahuna's powerful functionality, intuitive layout, and comprehensive DVE effects and transition tools enable SBG to simplify the production of compelling HD news content. Kahuna's FormatFusion technology will allow Sinclair stations to blend their substantial SD archives seamlessly into HD productions as they transition their stations to HD operations.

"News programming makes up a significant part of our revenue stream, so reliability and quality were paramount concerns during our evaluation of production switcher vendors," said Mark Nadeau, senior director at SBG. "We were very impressed with the image quality of Kahuna, and we've had excellent service and support from Snell & Wilcox. We were also attracted to Kahuna because its architecture seamlessly handles SD and HD sources at the same time, making it an ideal choice for the hybrid SD/HD world that broadcasters everywhere are working in as they transition to full HD operations. In addition to these benefits, everything from the feel of the buttons and switcher layout to its color correction and still store features to its integration with other systems made Kahuna the right choice for producing the quality HD news content our viewers demand."

"We are proud to be working with Sinclair Broadcast Group as it enhances its local news production capabilities across the United States," said Jonathan Goldstein, president of Snell & Wilcox Inc. "SBG's decision to deploy our Kahuna multiformat production switcher across its stations is yet another demonstration of the confidence broadcasters invest in the quality, performance, and ease-of-use of our image processing technologies."

The Snell & Wilcox Kahuna is the world's first and only, true multiformat SD/HD production switcher. Thanks to a Snell & Wilcox technology called FormatFusion, Kahuna enables simultaneous SD and HD operations in the same mainframe and on the same control panel. This vastly simplifies the HDTV transition for broadcasters by eliminating the need for external HDTV up/down/cross converters in the live production environment, as well as the cost and the signal path delay associated with these products. Kahuna has the smallest size mainframe, lowest weight and lowest power consumption when compared with other large switchers, and it has been integrated with dozens of third-party products including routers, servers, automation systems, and controllers.

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