EQUIPMENT...
Master control is the area where your station’s video and audio signals are routed to the cable company’s (or companies, if there are more than one in the community or district) head end. That signal is then sent out to the cable subscribers. The cable companies should provide the access center with the equipment it takes to get the signals to their head end. This equipment usually consists of signal modulators, fiber connections, etc. They (the cable operator) should also provide the center with equipment (usually demodulators) to send signals back to master control. These are necessary for the cable company to receive signals back to the playback area from remote live drops (such as city council/selectman’s chambers, schools, etc.) for recording or live cablecasting. You need to ensure that the cable operator provides the access center with a subscriber return feed, simply a regular cable line such as the one you receive in your home, so the master control operator can see how your signal is being fed to the cable subscribers (quality control).
Playback source equipment will usually consist of some format of tape, DVD, hard drive,and live sources, such as studio and remote feeds. What is chosen here should be consistent with the types of portable and editing equipment that is purchased. Generally, community sponsors submitting imported programming (programs produced somewhere other than you the local access center) will ask you what format you’d like their program on.
Cablecasting equipment to consider
• An audio/video switcher or router (chooses which piece(s) of equipment to play out).
• An automation system (for unattended playback of your programming).
• A community bulletin board system (a messaging system for displaying graphic pages).
• Monitors (for cuing of your playback devices).
• Televisions (usually one per each PEG channel, for monitoring of the subscriber signal).
• Waveform monitors.
• Vectorscopes.
• Time base corrector (TBC). A time base corrector or frame sync should be placed.
before each modulator and/or after each source.
