| BULGARIA'S TV STATIONS CHOOSE DVCPRO |
| The Bulgarian National Television (BNT) has now completely adopted Panasonic's DVCPRO format at 25 and 50Mbps for news and sport acquisition, editing, playout and archiving. Nearly all the major broadcast stations in Bulgaria have also chosen DVCPRO including Fox-owned bTV, commercial channel BBT and cable channel Eurocom, news channels Europe TV and Den, movie channel Diema Plus as well as the recently formed Bulgarian Military TV channel. Over 500 DVCPRO units have now been supplied to customers in Bulgaria by Panasonic's long established local distributor, Techno. BNT has taken delivery of AJ-D610 ENG kits, A/B roll edit suites equipped with AJ-D455 VTRs, AG-MX70 vision mixers and AG A850 edit controllers, as well as NLE stations using 4x transfer via SDTI with AJ-D780 VTRs. News production on the road is performed on AJ-LT85 laptop editors. Playout is done via AJ-D850 VTRs and AJ-D250 compact VTRs are used extensively for review by the reporters. Studio production at BNT is now done with AJ-D910 camcorders while AJ-SD955 and AJ-SD930 VTRs are used in edit suites and for playout. AJ-D960s and AJ-D950s are working in the BNT universal format conversion studios. Material preview and quality control is done on the AJ-D95 and AJ-D94 desktop VTRs. BNT has also now started transferring its archive to DVCPRO50. Among the largest TV stations using the Panasonic format are bTV - the private TV channel with national coverage owned by News Corp. The station is using the whole range of Panasonic DVCPRO50 VTRs in their studio work. Acquisition is done with AJ-D910, AJ-D610 and AJ-D410 camcorders. Field editing is done with an AJ-LT85 laptop. bTV is using a fully automated playout system based on the Panasonic SmartCart cart machine. BBT, another newly established TV station with nation-wide coverage, is using Panasonic's DVCPRO/DVCPRO50 equipment throughout its complete working cycle. The most popular cable TV station in Bulgaria - Eurocom TV, is fully equipped with Panasonic DVCPRO equipment. The situation is the same in the news channels TV Europe and Den, and also in the movie channel Diema Plus. In recent months the newly founded Bulgarian Military TV Channel also chose DVCPRO as its house format. The AJ-D455 and AJ-D250 VTRs are used in their studio. Acquisition is done with AJ-D410 camcorders. AG-MX70 vision mixers, Panasonic convertible cameras and monitors are also used in the facility. All Panasonic equipment is integrated into an automated on-air control system. ends |