APPLICATION REPORT
January 15th, 2009
Sports Zone Live, Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) local TV sports show, has new digs. Their state of the art high definition broadcast trailer will broadcast RIT’s home games
and potentially away games next year and is loaded with equipment such as two
configurable 50” plasma screens and five high definition cameras. What makes this project especially gratifying is the fact that it was completed by students of RIT. James Bober, the head engineer at RITs Educational Technology Center says, “The knowledge that our students have received from this is changing and molding their whole careers…what students learn in the class room can only take them so far. What we provide is a down to earth application that gives them the edge.”
Due to a limited budget, RIT had to come up with a creative way to keep costs
down while maintaining the highest quality possible. RIT came up with a solution that
called for customization of equipment that allowed each piece to do exactly what it
was meant to do. Jim Bober enlisted the help of Clark Wire & Cable in this process.
Daniel Collins, Director of Marketing elaborates, “We consider ourselves a company
that offers solutions more than anything else…we have on staff engineers and highly
trained technicians that can take a customer’s idea and make it happen exactly as
they envisioned.” Utilizing Clark Wire & Cable’s custom assembly and panel shop
in addition to Clark’s bulk cable products allowed RIT to concentrate on
other aspects of the project.
Clark was able to design a cable infrastructure that, of and in itself, was state of
the art yet still fit within RIT’s budget. The project manager for the RIT job explains, “We
at Clark are used to working under tight deadlines and budgetary concerns…we
constantly monitor our resources to make sure that our customers reap the benefits
when our costs go down. More to the point- in the RIT job we implemented a number of initiatives, including evaluations of our pricing structure, to come up with a number of programs that helped them meet their budgetary requirement.”
In addition to the custom products, Clark also provided hybrid fiber digital
camera cable (FCC1V2SH) for RITs Telemetrix units as well as about 22,000ft of Clark
DSM1 digital subminiature coax. Jim Bober explains his decision to use Clark, “We
have used Clark products for years, so we knew what to expect in regards to product quality- but their unbelievable service, support and workmanship on the custom assemblies really helped us on this project. As far as the choice for the FCC1V2SH cable, Clark was the originator of that cable. Could another company have done that cable? Sure, but I
thought that’s a Clark original and they are the experts on that cable so who better to
go with then the guys that designed it.” Collins elaborates, “Initially we developed our
FCC cable to be used with the Camplex control unit, it uses a single-mode fiber optic element for the high definition video and a coaxial cable for everything else. We’ve also included an
extra fiber line should one go down.” Having a high definition truck that is in a league
of its own was quite an undertaking from the design stage all the way through to the final walk through.
