According to Gearhouse Broadcast owner John Newton the term “4K ready” can be very misleading, especially when it comes to the world of OB super trucks. Hence the fact that Gearhouse’s newest truck, HD8 is simply referred to as a “native” 4K OB super truck.
Newton explained, “In order to be a native 4K truck you have to be able to handle everything from acquisition to production in real 4K and that’s exactly what our new HD8 super truck does”
Part of the raison d’être for HD8 comes from the launch of the new broadcast 4K ultra-HDTV camera from Hitachi, the SK-UHD4000. Gearhouse bought a fleet of these cameras during IBC earlier this year.
As Newton explains, “In the past you could only use 4K cameras with prime lenses and not zoom lenses. The new Hitachi camera changes all that and enables the use of existing zoom lenses. [It] is the only camera in the world that can do this and that’s why we purchased the first fifty [of them] at IBC this year, twenty of which have come to Australia and twelve of which are used in our new HD8 4K super truck.”
In addition to the new cameras the super truck also boasts a Sony MVS-7000X 4K vision mixer, Sony 4K monitoring and a 4K EVS replay system.
Newton added, “HD8 is even more than that as in addition to being Australia’s first native 4K truck HD8 is also capable of 2K, HD 1080i, HD 1080p and SD. For 4K HD8 is 12 camera capable. For HD it follows along the same specs as our existing HD5, HD6 and HD7 super trucks at 30 camera (24 CCU and 6 POV) capable. There’s more continuity too as HD8 carries the same 64 fader MC56 Lawo 5.1 capable audio desk, Riedel Artist 192-port talkback system and NVISION NV8576 hybrid main vision router as our existing trucks so all our clients can be comfortable with the systems they’ve used so many times before.”
Standalone areas in the truck include an audio mixing and control room, replay area, production gallery, CCU and vision control and engineering space providing Gearhouse’s clients with everything they need from signal acquisition to finished programme transmission. Gearhouse is targeting HD8 at live entertainment and cinematic productions as well as sport with the truck already booked for the upcoming AFC Asian Cup in January.
John Newton concluded, “Not only is it ideal for large scale entertainment but we can also do simulcast production outputting a 4K cut and an HD cut at the same time. We can also shoot in 4K then take the HD from the CCU. In this way our clients get to see how amazing the pictures look in 4K alongside those in HD.”
For more info on Gearhouse, check out its website: www.gearhousebroadcast.com
Gearhouse Broadcast owner John Newton with the company’s new and Australia’s first native 4K super truck, HD8.
