FOR-A switches to ITV’s new Coronation Street

With the move of ITV’s flagship Coronation Street production to a new home at MediaCityUK, the accompanying technical facilities included a new FOR-A MFR-5000 as the master routing switcher. Although mostly furnished with new equipment, the new installation has retained the FOR-A vision mixers from the previous facility.

The MFR-5000 master routing switcher, configured at Coronation Street with 96 inputs and 128 outputs, is responsible for all HDSDI video routing around the building. There is redundancy for the CPU and power supply and the router also includes GPI support.

Control is available from many positions via the three MFR-39RU mnemonic panels and 21 MFR-40RU panels. Support for the FOR-A equipment includes three MV-42HS quad-split multiviewers for in-vision audio confidence monitoring, and two FA-9500 multipurpose signal processors used for the colour correction of on-set, in-shot TV screens.

ITV Studios’ Coronation Street’s initial experience with FOR-A production equipment was through the use of two of its HVS-300HS vision mixers for camera switching and EDL creation at the previous set. Both of these switches have been re-installed and continue the same operation with production at the new location.

“The move gave us the opportunity to re-design signal distribution with a new video router at the core of the system,” commented Stan Robinson, Technical Manager, Coronation Street. “The reliability of any item is important but is vital for such core items. Based on the success of the HVS-300’s, FOR-A was high on our short list of preferred manufacturers. We quickly decided to invest in the MFR-5000 with 96 x 128 I/O with 24 remote control panels. The features that attracted us to the router include the build quality of the unit and its remote panels, as well as the flexibility of the Web Browser interface.