Covering the East, South and West services of the Meridian region, the station wanted to replace the Perspex prints in their three news studios on the Solent Business Park with widescreen projection - but only had the minimum of rear projection space behind the existing set in which to work.
The challenge was to mount a rig that would enable projection onto the TV Studio version of dnp's Giant Wide Angle Studio screen. While the images are shot in 4:3 aspect ratio, the custom-cut screen (trimmed to 3209mm x 1309mm) would be designed specifically to meet the set requirements, with the digital images displayed in 14:9 cinemascope format.
Paradigm AV also needed to bring their engineering skills in to play as they worked on the backstage geometry alongside Dolphin Media, set and scenic TV studio design specialists Jago Design and Scena. Annie Stonebridge, who project managed for Jago Design, confessed, "We initially thought the space would be too restrictive to accommodate a projector. We realised that in order for it to work the projector would need to be placed closer to the presenter and that we would need to create our own sound baffles."
For the first time, Dolphin Media's Mark Dolphin turned to the Panasonic PTD-7700 3-chip DLP projector, which met all the criteria in terms of price, compactness, brightness, noise output, redundancy and cost of ownership. Fitted with a 0.8 lens, the projector fires up vertically onto Paradigm's giant foil mirror. "Using an optically flat foil solution rather than glass gives a far superior image," states Dolphin.
The Panasonic projector had already been trialled successfully in combination with the dnp display at ITV London. As a result Paradigm were able to redesign their rig as a single piece of engineering, to support the projector and mirror, and optimise their screen. Back at ITV Meridian, the projector was floor mounted under the footer, and concealed with a tinted acrylic. Dolphin believes that this has been the most challenging project his company has undertaken. "It was all about calculating the geometry correctly and in the end we were fighting over just 4cm. We gave the problem to Paradigm who ended up engineering the plate, the structure and the mirror support. We relied on them entirely, as we were working at the very edge of what could be achieved optically."
Each region in the ITV Meridian catchment can now display moving images, shot on DVCam and delivered via hard disk via SSVP 1U rack servers. Each studio features a local icon, which needed to be telegenic; the station chose the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth for the Southern region, the Oracle Shopping Centre in Reading for the West and Maidstone River for the East (with a choice of different weather conditions).
Said head of operations, Roger Pearce: "While the image remains in the digital domain throughout, our longer term intention is to use live cameras. The feed to the projector is via an assignment matrix and we will just assign the live feed via the Vision Mixer aux switcher. But the new set-up has drastically changed the look of the programme."
His views were echoed by news director Lisa Nichols, who said that the installation had made an enormous impact on the station.
(Lee Baldock)
