5.0. SWCSR 02-05-2015 U
Sherburne Wright Cable Commission
Equipment Report
February 5th,2015
Cathy Shuman
I just want to take a moment to thank Cathy Shuman for all her help while representing
Monticello as their cable commission representative. I've had the pleasure of working with
Cathy since at she was at the old Monticello City Hall building. I want to wish her luck in her
future endeavors.
Commission Converter Install
By this point in the meeting you've heard enough about converters. I have been working with
Bob extensively to try and get this all straight. There have been many issues in each city with
converters going down or getting shut off. Most of you have contacted me multiple times to get
converters turned back on or fixed.
If you have a converter that goes down please try to take a photo of the serial number on the box.
It is located either on the bottom or back panel of the converter. I've added a photo so you can
see what the number looks like. There is also a serial number for the manufacturer but we need
the photo of the Charter serial number.
1114111 1A,
's.
Please note that the Charter#starts with a G or an M. The serial number on the right is
not the number that Charter uses to track the boxes.
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Charter and Government Channel Technical Problems
Whenever a city has had technical problems with their city channel that is due to an issue with
Charter equipment, we have been able to contact local Charter employees and get prompt and
professional help in resolving the issue. We recently received an email stating that they no longer
wanted me to contact the local employees but to instead call the 800 number to report service
issues.
We have an average of 3-6 calls per month. We do not contact them unless we have narrowed
down the problem to their equipment. Many times these technical failures happen right before a
council meeting or one of our live shoots.Not having access to discuss the technical problem
with a repair technician is very frustrating not only to us but to our citizens that subscribe to
cable to view meetings and community events.
Phase 1 of Cities HD Camera System Upgrade
We have finished with the main install work to upgrade our camera systems in Buffalo,Delano,
Elk River and Monticello for HD recording. The quality of productions has been dramatically
improved with increased picture resolution as well as how the system functions. We have
received many compliments as volunteers, city staff and viewers have noticed the change to the
productions playing back on the city channels.
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Buffalo Control Room HD Upgrade Buffalo Monitors Upgrade
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This is just the first phase in these cities for upgrading the equipment. We started in these cities
because they had the existing camera equipment that was easiest to modify and work with to
upgrade. We divided up each city into several equipment areas: 1) Cameras, Switchers and
Recording,2) Channel Playback, 3) Council Chambers Presentation 4) Portable and
Editing.
The Camera, Switching and Recording area is the most difficult and labor intensive to upgrade.
In keeping with our 5 year plan we are now able to move onto the next cities to start on their
camera systems while working on the other equipment areas in the first cities.
Our cost per city has turned out much lower in the first phase due to taking advantage of a
special trade-in offered by Newtek and AV Solutions and aggressively managing install costs.
Staff training in each city has been going very well. Although we have tried to make the systems
as compatible as possible each city has slight variations in their install to accommodate their
facility.
Delano Gym Install
We have completed the trailer interface in the Delano High School Gym complex. This school
was very hard to run cable into for sporting and community events. The gym has a running track
around the street level area and the gym is below grade. As you can see in the photos,to pull
cable to the gym area we have to cross the running track which is in use constantly.
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Delano HS Running Track Pulling cable across gym ceiling
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We core drilled a 4"hole through the outside wall on the back of the gym to pull cables through.
We installed special wall hooks to place our cables above and across the running track. We also
used the school's lift to pull cat.6 cable across the gym ceiling to connect to their network.
By parking our trailer in the back of the school and running cables through this new access we
are minimizing any contact by the public near our equipment. Since the issue at the Elk River
Football game we go to great lengths to minimize running our cables anywhere the public walks.
You can see in the photo on the following page how we ran the cables at the Maple Lake Gym.
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Delano Gym Trailer Access Trailer Cable Interface Maple Lake HS Gym
Equipment Repairs, Upgrades and Miscellaneous Notes
Buffalo - We finished the first phase of HD upgrades in the Buffalo Council Chambers. We have
also held staff training. We are making some additional changes to their presentation system.
Elk River- We finished the first phase of HD upgrades in the Elk River Council Chambers. We
have also held staff training. We are almost finished with an HD press feed in their council
chambers. We are making some additional changes to their presentation system.
Rockford—We had an issue with audio in the playback rack but otherwise everything is
working well.
Big Lake—Everything is going smoothly in Big Lake. They are in our next group of cities to
upgrade.
Cokato—We had some equipment issues in their playback rack that have been repaired.
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Monticello - We finished the first phase of HD upgrades in the Monticello Council Chambers.
We have also held staff training. We had some issues with the dais monitors but these have been
repaired. We are making some additional changes to their presentation system.
Delano - We finished the first phase of HD upgrades in the Delano Council Chambers. We have
also held staff training. We are making some additional changes to their presentation system.
Dassel- Dassel reported having problems with their Nexus and Scala system. We replaced both
systems and everything has worked correctly since then
Watertown—We had some recording issues in Watertown that have been resolved. They are in
our next group of cities to upgrade.
Maple Lake—They had some equipment failures in their playback system and KVM switch. We
replaced a monitor and added a new KVM switch.
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