Ten Eighty Media is a full service event staging and equipment rental company founded in 2008 by Michael Bird and David Cleaves. The company specializes in high-end live event production, broadcast video equipment, lighting, grip and audio gear rental. For the past two years, the 1080 media team has used Panasonic’s AV-HS450N SD/HD model as their primary production switcher in video flypacks.
The Panasonic HS450N features have proven useful to Bird and his team. Most notably, the HS450N has become the ideal touring partner owing to the switcher’s small footprint and its exceptional flexibility in conjunction with the team’s flypacks. The unit’s built-in multiviewers have eliminated the need to drag around loads of heavy HD monitors. Due to the switcher’s four built-in up/down/cross-converting video inputs, and the add-on full-HD resolution DVI cards, Bird and team now have extra scaling power and can free up their standalone scaler units for use on other jobs.
Moreover, the HS450N allows his team access to a great HD production tool. The Panasonic switcher comes with 16 standard HD/SD-SDI inputs, and can be expanded to accommodate as many as 20 video sources. It houses two option slots, as well as four aux outs, four HD/SD-SDI outputs, and two DVI-D outputs. Further, it allows for dual picture-in-picture modes. These features make the HS450 excel in a class of its own in terms of receiving a high return on investment.
Ten Eighty Media’s reputation for being nimble, providing well-engineered systems and full high-definition video production capability is reaffirmed via the Panasonic HS450N. Through their two years of using the HS450N, it has shown itself to be quite rock solid, easy-to-use with essential functions and a great overall production tool for the live event video world. Bird and his team believe that choosing the HS450N was a wise choice, since they could have spent thousands more to purchase another switcher, but not have received all of the features and capabilities that the HS450N offers.
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