[SatNews] Snell has announced that Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), Germany's national public television broadcaster, has deployed two Snell Kahuna 360 multi-format production switchers and a Snell Sirius 840 router as part of a technology upgrade for its two production studios in Düsseldorf and Mainz, Germany.

The new Snell systems join 13 Snell Kahuna switchers that are in use in both outside broadcast and live studio environments, including Germany's leading news magazine program, "heute-journal."

A Snell customer since the mid-1990s, ZDF was one of the first broadcasters to use Snell conversion solutions. Today, ZDF employs Snell's state-of-the-art Alchemist Ph.C-HD motion-compensated standards converter in addition to numerous other Snell systems. One of the new Kahuna 360s has been installed in ZDF's regional studio in Düsseldorf to drive production for smaller talk shows and a daily news program. The other Kahuna 360 was purchased for ZDF's new STB-3 multi-purpose control room in Mainz, which can be linked to any ZDF studio and also the outdoor venue on the ZDF grounds where "Fernsehgarten," a popular Sunday morning entertainment program, is produced in the summer months. The Kahuna 360 at STB-3 also enables production of content in which camera feeds are transmitted from faraway locations and then edited and switched on site.

Supplied via BFE Studio und Medien Systeme GmbH, the Sirius 840 router is the first from Snell's 800 Series to be installed at ZDF, providing 336 coaxial and fiber inputs, 576 coaxial and fiber outputs, and 140 multi-viewer outputs.