Some television viewers, those with “rabbit ears” or a rooftop antenna, will need to purchase and install a converter box to watch TV after the mandated switch to digital television set for Friday, June 12. Households already hooked up to cable, satellite or another form of pay television service do not need to do anything for the digital television switch because their service will not be affected.
Meanwhile, video production and broadcast companies such as Brookfield-based Video Wisconsin have to make capital investments for new equipment to keep up with the latest video technology so they can capture the better quality images required for digital and high definition broadcasts.
“Things are changing so quickly, standards are being developed that we want to make sure we are making purchases that are still going to be viable in a few years,” said John Barto, chief operating officer of Video Wisconsin. “Right now there is no industry standard. It’s difficult to sort out what the preferred format is.”
Video Wisconsin specializes in video and film production, video post production, meetings/event theater support, audio design, recording, 2D and 3D graphic and animation, DVD authoring, web design, broadcast duplication and video conferencing.
“We are one of the largest film production facilities in the Midwest,” Barto said.
The company has its own audio recording studio, its own production facility and a 40-foot by 60-foot soundstage that it uses for film production, and also rents out to outside film crews who need a space.
“We have a lot of fun here, and pretty much anything a company needs or wants done we can do,” Barto said. “Our continuing ability to produce quality images in high definition is only going to mean better results for our customers.”
According to Barto, footage can be shot in several formats including high definition (HD), digital or analog. It is possible to take material in an HD format and make it compatible for a digital or analog screening, but it is not possible to do it from analog to digital or from digital to HD.
By federal law full-power television stations nationwide must begin broadcasting exclusively in a digital format by June 12. The switch has been coming for quite some time and has only been pushed back due to the cost of the transition for broadcasters, Barto said.
Broadcasting in the digital format is more efficient, and will free up the airwaves for a variety of new services. Digital TV also provides more free channels and even free over-the-air HD television. Video Wisconsin is in the process now of reforming all of their data and data storage to be produced in HD.
“We have always strived to be a premier facility,” said Colleen Hartley, vice president of operations. “From an acquisition point of view it makes sense (to film everything in HD) because we can always take something shot in HD and reduce (the footage) to standard digital or lower quality for the web, but we can’t go the other way.”
According to Hartley, producing everything in HD requires the company to pay a lot more attention to detail.
“Makeup becomes a lot more critical, and everything needs to be looked at for details because on an HD television everything in the camera is going to show up on the screen,” she said.
Filming and storing data in a high definition format is going to have some extra costs associated with it, Barto said.
“Somebody has to end up paying, but we are trying to keep the cost down as much as we can, and not raising our rates any more than we have to,” he said.
Barto and his partner Mike Crivello formed the company after working as cameramen for a local news station. They got their first gig and in 1984 and built the company’s current facility to meet its production needs. n
