Jones Mobile Television unveils new HD truck

Broadcast Engineering by Catherine Overbury

Recently they completed a $3 million USD conversion of their 51' (15.5 meter) digital expanding production trailer to high definition (HD).

Jones Mobile Television (JMTV) is a full-service location video production company located in Arkansas, USA, which serves a wide range of national sports, corporate, and entertainment clients. Recently they completed a $3 million conversion of their 51-ft digital expanding production trailer to HD. All standard definition equipment, including monitoring, was removed from the mobile unit and replaced with state-of-the-art HD gear.

Before the upgrade, more than 150 CRT monitors were on board. All were replaced with LED monitors. 18 Matrox MicroQuad multiviewers now feed 80% of these new LED monitors in areas such as audio, video shading, the server/tape room, and half of production.

“We chose the Matrox MicroQuads for their quality, ease of use, and very attractive price,” explains Bob Derryberry, President and Co-owner of Jones Mobile Television. “There are a lot of quad multiviewers on the market but since we had experience with other Matrox products in the past, we knew that we could rely on the MicroQuads for our new application.”

Although all controls are on the individual units, JMTV’s MicroQuads are mounted in the racks so the truck engineer-in-charge (EIC), John Matthews, found it convenient to use the Windows-based MicroQuad Remote application to control each unit from the QC/video control area of the mobile production truck. “Since every show requires a different monitor layout, it is imperative that we can quickly and easily change these layouts from show to show. The MicroQuads let us do all this with an easy-to-use, no charge application included with the units,” explains Matthews. read more...