Western Illinois University for choosing TriCaster 8000 for their jump to HD broadcasting

The Western Courier by Charlie Schmidt

Western's Channel 3 has never looked better.

Western broadcasting students, faculty and program alumni came together for the official opening of their new high definition studio on Wednesday. A broadcast demonstration using the new equipment and a ribbon cutting ceremony — of audio tape — were part of the event.

Chair of Western’s broadcasting department William “Buzz” Hoon said that the upgrade to HD was a process that took several years to make possible.

“It took some planning,” Hoon said. “We had to decide — what did we have to have, what did we want to have and what our students needed to have."

So after doing that we kind of put in the proposal and tried to save our money over a period of years and thought that if the university could find some money to help us out we could afford it.”

The $100,000 upgrade to HD happened in part because of the drop in cost of the technology itself in recent years. This led Hoon to believe that the upgrade was possible. A partial self-instillation by the department of some of the equipment helped keep the costs down and make an HD broadcasting studio and control room a reality.

“It provides the opportunity for them to have the latest technology that they can say that they’ve been trained on, that they’re familiar with and that they can produce programming in high definition,” Hoon said. “We understand that not every commercial television station has the latest equipment, but for them to be out in the world competing against institutions with more funding, more support, now they have the ability to say that they know at least they’ve had the opportunity to have that equipment available to them.” read more...

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	NewTek TriCaster 8000 Live Production Integrated with Broadcast Operations $39,995.00			NewTek TriCaster 410 Educational $9,495.00			NewTek TriCaster 460 Educational with Control Surface $19,495.00