Testimonials - Synergy 100

Manhattan Neighborhood Network goes towards the digital future with a Ross Synergy 100 switcher

Martin Lucas
Director of Technology
Manhattan Neighborhood Network
New York City, NY

Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) is responsible for administering the Public Access cable television services in Manhattan.

Our purpose is to ensure the ability of Manhattan residents to exercise their rights through the medium of cable television and create opportunities for mutual communication, education, artistic expression and other non-commercial uses of video facilities on an open, uncensored and equitable basis.

In providing these services, MNN seeks to involve the diverse racial, ethnic and geographic communities of Manhattan in their varied interests, needs, concerns and identities.

I'm in charge of technology development at MNN. We air some 60,000 programs a year on four channels operating 20 hours a day. The shows produced at MNN range from music, religion, and immigrant rights to the arts from dance, painting, cooking and furniture building. Many of the shows aired are produced in our building on West 59th Street in Midtown Manhattan. On any given day, we have three busy studios and over a dozen edit stations in use by some of our 5,000+ community producers.

My job includes overseeing new development in our facility. The trick is, we want to offer community producers not just the latest bells and whistles, but quality video production equipment that can be learned relatively easily by people who by-and-large are not broadcast professionals.

My first mandate when I came to MNN a year ago was to develop a plan for a new studio and have it built within the year. Our old equipment had worked hard for the last six years and we were looking to replace it quickly. The first difficult question was analog or digital? Basically, our producers use mini-DV or VHS and the switch to digital typical for a broadcast facility is not something taken for granted in the community media world.

I looked at the six years since the last equipment purchase and tried to look six years in the future. I needed a 'forward-compatible' switcher, but one that was not too futuristic for community producers who require a maximum of two days training before jumping in on their own.

I then came to the conclusion that the Ross Synergy 100 was the production switcher MNN needed.

The Ross Synergy 100 is inexpensive and compact; it dropped into the same space in the console as our old Echolab switcher with room to spare, not to mention the minimal 1RU the frame takes up in our rack.

The Synergy 100 also has a variety of DVE effects (we chose the Squeeze & Tease 2D internal DVE as an option). Squeeze & Tease is great - it gives us effects the producers enjoy and are able to learn without any problem. Previously, we had a For-A DVE which gave us a variety of effects, however, the problem was the learning curve was too high. Almost no one used the DVE which represented a fairly large investment for a non-profit.

The Synergy 100's ease-of-use has meant our staff were able to learn the machine fairly quickly and are able to assist our community producers readily. As I can look down at the studio right now, I see two of our community producers on-camera and another playing his Stratocaster. They've switched the Hitachi Z3000W cameras to 16:9 aspect ratio for a widescreen look. The cameras are SDI and are linked up via triax cable to our Synergy 100 switcher.

In fact there's even a 'fun factor' to using the Synergy 100 that was missing from our old system. With almost no lighting to speak of, we're able to get some of the best looking chromakeys I've seen. We've been able to key staff sitting everywhere from the balcony of the Stock Exchange to the middle of Times Square with crisp edges and none of the telltale blue ghosting typical of inexpensive chromakey units.

Our studio is SDI but we still broadcast in composite analog NTSC. We were able to interface our SDI studio with a variety of conversion equipment from Ross - some in the $1 frames we bought with the switcher.

With Ross' Synergy 100 digital production switcher, we found what we were looking for in a switcher and are looking forward to the future where we send out our signals digital all the way.