"We chose to standardize on the Kahuna because in this competitive world, one has to invest in the best," said NDTV Senior Technology Officer Jay Chauhan. "When we evaluated Kahuna, we felt it was a product much ahead of its time, and we were impressed with its advanced technology. It can be upgraded easily and will be an asset to our business for a long time. Mission critical reliability was another important factor for us, and based on our experience with Snell & Wilcox products, we are confident about Kahuna's performance, its reliability, and accompanying support."

With its intuitive control surface, the Kahuna production switcher will allow operators at NDTV to come up to speed quickly in producing live programming, and the stable operation of the system will ensure round-the-clock productivity and maximum uptime in bringing the new channel to air. The Kahuna's format flexibility provides a future-proof solution that will accommodate further growth of NDTV's broadcast operations.

NDTV is a longtime Snell & Wilcox customer, already employing Snell & Wilcox switchers, image processing, and IQ Modular infrastructure gear at its facilities in New Delhi, and the six new Kahuna production switchers will serve as the workhorses behind NDTV's Metronation channels. NDTV will begin using each Kahuna system in SD-only mode, but the state-of-the-art switcher's easy HD upgrade path, which enables multiformat SD/HD use or HD-only use, gives the broadcaster future flexibility in working with and combining the two formats.

The Kahuna production switcher is the first such product to integrate SD and HD inputs on the same control panel and within the same mainframe, effectively making all SD and HD sources interchangeable. Working in multiformat SD/HD mode, Kahuna users can mix existing SD camera feeds, graphics, handheld shots, and archive footage directly into an HD production with no need to purchase expensive HD upgrades or extra HD upconversion equipment. Snell & Wilcox's FormatFusion technology allows those SD sources to be seamlessly integrated into HD productions and vice versa.

In addition to a dedicated FormatFusion engine, each Kahuna M/E bank features four keyers able to perform luma, linear, and chroma keying; five transition wipe generators; a still store and RAM recorder; RGB color correction; two utility buses; and DMEM capability. The easy-to-use yet powerful Kahuna IMPAKT suite of 3-D DVEs provides effects including spheres, slabs, zooms, warps, tiling, ripples, rolls and peels, fragmentation, lighting effects, and corner pinning ? all of which can be applied in SD, HD, or both formats. Two of NDTV's Kahuna systems incorporate the IMPAKT option, which offers operators timesaving premade effects and the ability to work in source-based or bus-based modes, enabling both background and fill-and-key manipulation.

"NDTV has always been known for its willingness to invest in new technology, and the company's Kahuna purchase demonstrates its continued leadership in adopting advanced broadcast solutions," said Joe Zaller, vice president, strategic marketing, at Snell & Wilcox. "As India's broadcast market
continues to grow and evolve, NDTV will be equipped to maintain a high production standard for its news and information programming."