LOS ANGELES, CA (Dec. 2000) -- The National Basketball Association's Cleveland Cavaliers (Cleveland, OH) have purchased Panasonic DVCPRO50 Progressive scan equipment to produce player and personnel features for broadcast on Fox Sports Net and the local UPN affiliate. The purchase included the AJ-PD900WA 2/3-inch DVCPRO50 Progressive camcorder with the TC-7WMS1 7-inch Color LCD Display, and two AJ-PD950A progressive studio VTRs. According to Matthew Widowski, Video Services Manager for the Cavs/Gund Arena Company, much of the production for the 30-minute Cavs Fastbreak sports feature show, airing twice monthly on Fox Sports Net, is done in-house with the Panasonic equipment. Cavalier features also air during the 25 televised games on UPN station WUAB, Home Team 43.

The DVCPRO50 480 progressive gear will also be utilized to shoot features on the WNBA's Cleveland Rockers, who play at the Gund Arena June through August.

In addition, video segments shot with the AJ-PD900WA are also used for scoreboard presentations during home games.

"After reviewing our options, DVCPRO50 progressive afforded us the best quality within our budget parameters," Widowski said. "It gives us the flexibility to acquire in several format iterations--25Mbps, 50Mbps and 480 progressive--and we're prepared for an eventual transition to HD within the same DVCPRO family. And for the time being, the format integrates well into what's been an analog environment.

"As a Beta SP user, I did consider upgrading to Digi Beta, but ultimately found that DVCPRO50 Progressive demonstrated as good--if not better--image quality and was much less expensive. What's more, Digi Beta didn't give me acceptable integration options within our budget parameters."

He added, "Because we're very limited for space in the arena, I really like the fact that I can archive an entire three-hour game on a single DVCPRO cassette (recorded in 25Mbps). Versus two larger, fairly expensive Betacam SP tapes, I can now record on one smaller cassette that costs less and conserves storage space."

Widowski noted that having DVCPRO made the Cavaliers a more versatile content provider, as many local Cleveland broadcasters operate with the Panasonic format.

"We opted for the progressive iteration of DVCPRO50 as it will yield the best possible upconversion to HD," he remarked. "As one of the chief operators of the AJ-PD900WA, I have been soundly impressed from our first field test with the camcorder's image quality--it looks great in low light, and gives me clean, bright colors and sharp images. The menu system is fairly simple and has great functionality. The camcorder is reasonably lightweight, comfortable on the shoulder and, overall, is easy to use."

Currently, Widowski is recording chiefly in 4:3, but plans to deploy 16:9 to shoot some in-house music videos--with players--for the pregame Hard Rock Radio show. He explained that one AJ-PD950A deck is used for playback into an NLE system, and the second records program feeds for archiving. He outfitted the AJ-PD900WA camcorder with the TC-7WMS1 7-inch monitor for studio use and to acquire management "talking heads" pieces for interoffice communications.

DVCPRO Progressive provides content creators a new means of acquiring and finishing in high resolution, while saving money by shooting on a nearly standard definition budget. DVCPRO Progressive offers 480 lines of Progressive Scan recording at a digital video data rate of 50Mbps, a low 5:1 DV-based compression ratio, 4:2:0 signal processing, four 16-bit 48 kHz uncompressed digital audio channels, and compatibility with 25Mbps DVCPRO, 50Mbps DVCPRO50 and 100Mbps DVCPRO HD.

With 60 complete frames per second, 480p is perfect for sports and live-action and is the ideal medium for upconverting and inter-cutting with HDTV formats as well as for digital cinema (tape-to-film) applications.

Capable of recording either 16:9 or 4:3 images, the AJ-PD900WA DVCPRO Progressive camcorder features three 2/3-inch M-FIT CCDs and records 480 progressive scan images in 50Mbps and 480 interlace images in 50Mbps and 25Mbps. Fully-operational at under 14 pounds, it consumes less than 28 watts of power and offers a bayonet mount for high definition or standard definition 2/3-inch lenses.

The AJ-PD950A records and plays back 25Mbps 4:1:1 and 50Mbps 4:2:2 DVCPRO50, is switchable between 525 (NTSC) and 625 (PAL), and offers four channels of 48kHz, 16-bit digital audio.