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Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association Inc., known as WETA Washington, D.C., to its public television and radio audience, has extended its digital transition with a newly developed broadcast origination facility. WETA acquired a six-story office building in Arlington, VA, in 1995 to expand its present television and radio capabilities after evaluating numerous facility alternatives for HDTV and digital broadcast transmission. The result is a state-of-the-art broadcasting facility that provides origination and transmission services for WETA's existing television (TV 26) and radio stations as well as its digital channel (TV 27). The WETA organization, a major producer of renowned public television programming such as "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," "Washington Week in Review" and "In Performance at the White House," will utilize the new digital facility to build upon its leadership role within the PBS community.

As an early producer of HDTV programming for local and national distribution (beginning in 1997), WETA also considered the development of new production studios and edit rooms as part of its digital television development plans. WETA assigned a high priority to the development of digital origination and transmission capabilities and is now considering the buildout of new studios and production areas. The nearby WETA production studios and control rooms provide satisfactory live production capability and are connected to the new building via a WETA owned 60-strand fiber optic bundle. WETA remains attuned to the evolving marketplace with the recognition that DTV and its development will likely involve entire new services, partnership arrangements, and innovative data/program distribution approaches.

Defining problems and opportunities The exceptional business changes the broadcast industry is experiencing today can be looked at as an opportunity to leverage digital television, datacasting or Internet-mediated content convergence (accessible merged content). The difficult technical challenge for WETA, and any other broadcaster for that matter, is to invest wisely in new digital capabilities before customer behavior is set and many of the technical trends are better clarified. There are just too many variables for TV stations' DTV business strategies to be comfortably developed. Determining priorities is a must.

WETA operates with an always-evolving mission to take advantage of new broadcast opportunities. WETA's technical facility is designed to be flexible and open to the exciting new "Internet-age" ideas that are anticipated during the broadcast industry's wide-ranging transition. WETA's bottom line for its multiyear expansion plan was not only to first establish a DTV broadcast foundation in keeping with the FCC's mandated major market schedule, but also to maintain the flexibility to evolve the facility's capabilities as the organization moves to meet new and unforeseen marketplace opportunities.

The immediate imperative of WETA's digital facility project was to build a multichannel television plant capable of SDTV and HDTV. Also paired with WETA's television facility goals were the technical requirements of its counterpart, the WETA-FM public radio station. By coordinating efforts between the television and radio engineering personnel, a digital "blueprint" was developed to represent each group's long-term goals and requirements. In consideration of cost and efficiency factors, the radio and television technical plants desired to share as much infrastructure as possible between the independently operated radio and TV groups.

A familiar personnel theme affecting today's broadcast operations and business climate also guided the design process. These new technical facilities would use fewer technical personnel to deal with the increasingly complex programming deliverables. Doing "more with less" over the long-term places a premium on the tasks of selecting, arranging and incorporating the latest technologies, developing efficient space layouts and work flow approaches, and integrating expansion plans into a multiyear phased development cycle.

The WETA-TV engineering team and Communications Engineering Inc. (CEI), Newington, VA, a turnkey television and radio engineering and integration firm, designed, engineered and built a new "future-proof" technical facility. CEI worked hand in hand with the WETA team to develop the individual technical systems needed. CEI later followed the design activities with a turnkey implementation and buildout of the entire WETA technical plant during the fall of 1999. Now completed, WETA-TV hasbegun the transmission of TV 26 (NTSC) and TV 27 (HDTV & SDTV) through its new digital signal infrastructure and technical platform.

The challenges Some of the primary challenges faced in accommodating current and future needs at WETA's broadcast facility involved issues such as: The selection and strategy for major technical systems; Integration of separate quality control (QC) solutions; Ergonomics and viewing sight-line considerations; Console design and technology controls layout; and, The display of 4:3 and 16:9 images.

CEI prepared CAD models and extensive analysis coordinated with the design team, which produced some novel and flexible solutions in WETA's master control facility. The second floor technical spaces were built with a raised floor level of only four inches for radio and 12 inches for TV utilizing the existing slab to slab height of only 11 feet. Acoustic design requirements for radio utilized much of the available ceiling space. The supporting equipment center, used by both the radio and television groups, was located on the first floor to accommodate future expansion and offer proximity to the building's telecom/fiber closet and its wide area network (WAN) demarcation connections.

Both 270Mb/s and 1.5Gb/s SDI video and AES/EBU audio routing and distribution infrastructures were built for WETA to support the expected future volume of SD and HD programming. Operators prepare programming for broadcast from a media prep area adjacent to the master control room. Program content from network satellite feeds or videotape is recorded to GVG Profile servers with appropriate information entered into a Louth automation database. The two Profile systems provide ingest and playout capability as well as redundancy to protect the on-air broadcast. Presently, WETA's HDTV programming originates from D5 and HDCam tape machines, providing playback to the GVG HD Master Control Switcher system. The HD SDI signal feeds a Harris/Lucent FlexiCoder ATSC Encoding System that incorporates a PSIP Plus generator. A Sencore 19.39 disk server is also used for the replay of pre-encoded HD programming. A record/playout area is located between master control and media prep. This area houses computers for the Louth multichannel automation systems, numerous VTR's (DigiBeta, Betacam SX, DVCPro, HDCam, D5 and one-inch), an Odetics cart machine, and a StorageTek near online robotic tape library. A rack of equipment supporting DTV needs is also in this area. WETA's compact storage videotape library is nearby as is space destined for a second independent master control room to support future channel expansion.

WETA master control room The custom monitor wall and operators console designed for WETA incorporates a combination of 9" and 14" Ikegami and Sony monitors, flat panel computer displays, Sony 42" plasma display panel, Sony 50" LCD rear projection displays, and Sony 34" widescreen HD monitors. The display systems are integrated with a Miranda Kaleido Multi Image Display System that allows the master control operators to dynamically select various combinations of video sources to be presented on the 50" LCD displays. Pre-arranged combinations of NTSC, SDTV and HDTV signals can be alternatively displayed or blended on the LCD rear projection screens to support simultaneous multichannel/multiformat transmissions. CEI also designed and manufactured the master control room's consoles that will be staffed by one to four operators depending on the program schedule and complexity. A Chyron Maxine! graphics system and an HD Duet character generator system are also incorporated.

In order to keep track of the many program sources that could appear on multiple channels, a source identification system was incorporated into the Miranda Kaleido system. The display devices mentioned above are provided with virtual under-monitor displays or character displays that are part of the multi-image pictures on the 50" monitors. Information to drive the source ID displays is derived from the routing and master control switcher systems. TV's master control is provided with dynamic on-air, isolated, and ready under monitor indicators. WETA's master control room also features: Grass Valley Group M2100 master control switching system and SMS routing. A multichannel SD and HD master control switcher is integrated with a Tektronix SMS-7000 digital video and AES audio routing system currently supporting one SD channel with plans to easily expand to additional broadcast channels. A Tektronix HD routing system is also integrated with the master control room to support WETA's HD channel 27. Tektronix AES/EBU synchronous routing system. The audio infrastructure is shared with WETA 90.0 FM with separate controls and matrix crosspoints for each independent operation. CEI designed and integrated a fully digital and synchronous audio plant with 75V AES 3 cable, instead of traditional 110V twisted pair for plant signals. The AES 3 cable plant allows higher sample rate digital signals and longer cable lengths within the plant and is outfitted with impedance-matched jackfield panels from ADC. WETA's multichannel server and data tape library system. Virtually all programming at WETA is originated from servers. The system is comprised of an ingest and playout servers utilizing Tektronix 4:2:2 Profiles. The server systems transfer data via fibre channel between Profiles, and to and from a StorageTek 9740 Timberwolf Automated DLT Tape Library system. The fibre channel data is converted to SCSI via Dell Data Mover computers for transfer to the StorageTek DLT library. This combination of technology allows for the ready access to over 1800 hours of programming with thousands more hours easily accessible. Additional components include an Odetics TCS-45 Cart Machine, and a high definition ATSC 19.39Mb/s server from Sencore. Multichannel automation systems. Louth automation systems located in the media prep area are used to create a database and prepare the program content for later playout. Louth is integrated with master control's technology systems to support automated on-air transmissions. Extensive RS-422 and TCP/IP data control signals are routed through the WETA facility utilizing switches from NVision and 3Com. Shared infrastructure systems. The HVAC, UPS and generator backup power systems in the facility were designed to support the television and radio technical spaces. The second floor space received substantial acoustic treatment to address the adjacency to noisy mechanical areas such as the elevators, machine rooms, etc., as well as the building location next to a major interstate highway and a helicopter flight path to and from the Pentagon. While sharing the global positioning system (GPS) time reference system, WETA television runs an independent clock system from the radio operation due to differences resulting from their respective satellite transmission paths from PBS and NPR signal sources.

Keeping an eye on the future WETA continues to follow the numerous DTV technical and business issues that have surfaced to date. Future considerations will evolve from many of the unanswered questions including: How will the public broadcaster manage the expected competing demands of multiple SDTV streams, HDTV and datacasting within the 19.39Mb/s bitstream? With DTV consumer receivers still in development and issues such as DTV must-carry still unresolved, how can the broadcaster plan for an uncertain DTV penetration timetable? How should future plant design reflect the needs to handle the both traditional video production and distribution and internet type content? WETA has been primarily broadcasting a single HDTV stream but has tested multicasting four channels of SD as well as one SD channel and one HD channel. Datacasting has also been tested and WETA is exploring opportunities while awaiting further development and sales of DTV receiver cards for personal computers. Washington, D.C. has a significant population of DTV early adopter consumers who provide very useful feedback that has impacted WETA's DTV strategy. DTV is not only here to stay but is key to WETA's future and mission as a public broadcaster.A key lesson learned by the WETA organization during its digital transition so far is the realization that traveling DTV's bumpy road involves many important choices that cannot be pre-ordained. It is also understood that the digital broadcasting transition resembles the phrase, "it's not over until it's over." WETA's initial pragmatic steps have prepared the technical foundation to reach audiences with superior digital services. However they plan to "stay tuned" for the next expected or unexpected event in the unfolding DTV and digital media marketplace.

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