Pittsburgh Penguins Pick Ikegami Cameras

The National Hockey League's Pittsburgh Penguins have purchased four new Ikegami HD cameras for their new arena and in-house HD media center. The cameras will be used to provide live video for the new CONSOL Energy Center arena scoreboard and for promos, TV shows, advertising and other content produced by the franchise.

The new cameras include three Ikegami HDK-77EC full-digital multi-format HD CMOS camera systems and one HDL-50 one-piece full-digital multi-format HD point of view camera.

The cameras were chosen after a shootout between various vendors. "The CMOS image processing helped separate the HDK-77EC from the rest of the pack, right out of the box," explained Chris DeVivo, director of media technology for the Pittsburgh Penguins in a statement.

Besides image quality, DeVivo also cited the fact that the cameras were "cost effective" and offered very flexible HD workflows.

The HDK-77EC portable docking-style dual-format HD cameras have been deployed throughout the arena and the HDL-50 one-piece "box camera" has been used to shoot down at the ice from the central scoreboard.