KNOE TV is a CBS affiliated station in Northeast Louisiana and we are the number 1 news station in our market airing five and a half hours of live programming every weekday.

In late January 2002, our facility suffered a severe lightning strike. Most of the damage was confined to video distribution amplifiers and were easily repaired. However, the major damage was the loss of our 20 year old CDL 480 switcher. Repair was not an option and its replacement was a priority. With a major industry push toward a total digital environment, a digital replacement seemed the only logical choice.

After examining features versus cost of available switchers, the Ross Synergy 3 emerged as the prime contender for our station's consideration. In our old production room, we always liked to do "live" remote shots with a "double box" setup, one box for the local news anchor(s) and another box with the field reporter. This would require the use of two independent DVEs and the system timing never seemed to be correct. The Ross Synergy 3 switcher was configured with 2 Squeeze & Tease 3D DVEs and now we can effect "Quad" boxes on the screen if the director chooses and the system timing between boxes is always correct.

The Squeeze & Tease 3D, as well as the future use of Aspectizers, for dual aspect ratio use during our conversion to full digital, helped us make our decision.

Also, we have very little SDI equipment at this time, so all of our analog video sources would have to be converted. Once again, it was "Ross to the rescue". With their complete line of RossGear A to D and D to A converters, Ross was truly "one-stop shopping" for KNOE TV.

Installation of the Ross Synergy 3 gave us the opportunity to completely redesign the production room where the new switcher was to be installed. Installation was extremely easy. Towards the end, we thought we had a major problem with the D to A converted quality of the new switcher, however, the fault ended up being a faulty (non-Ross) video DA in our system video chain.

The new features and ease of operation made our operators feel at ease. Everyone really liked the Preview Overlay which is an option that is not available on other switchers. And the idea of using the main program row as a full featured MLE was a real winner with the group.

We found out that a few of the RossGear products that we obtained did not have the options (namely Frame Syncs) that we really needed. A phone call from our dealer to Ross rectified those minor problems quickly and easily.

Now that our new Ross Synergy 3 is online, we find we have a whole new arsenal of production tools available for our staff to offer our viewers and customers and we now have a good start to our total digital conversion. As we upgrade our analog sources to digital ones, all we have to do is remove the conversion equipment and keep going. Whenever the time comes to replace our other analog switcher, I don't think IÕll look around quite as hard as I did this time.

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