[Matthew Skibor]

Jim,

thanks for your input.
HD is not a priority for me, but I guess it’s always smart to be somehow ready for HD-era so I was thinking about doing SD but with the equipment ready to accept HD as well.
The problem I have with Atem or Tricaster is portability/footprint issue. With a full hardware switcher, under ideal conditions I just need a main unit/panel combo in a box + previev/pgm on one monitor + optical player. The other thing that bothers me is reliability. Where I work the PC solution has proven a bit fragile (although it’s not Tricaster), and, honestly, to me using physical buttons seems more natural than clicking on graphical UI.
In my previous workplace we successfully used consumer-grade DVD player to feed animated background to a For-A Ginga switcher (probably via component>SDI) and it worked out even with quality-concerned major broadcasters, so I think I’ll go for it.
Glad you mentioned HDMI – it never occured to me, perhaps I could use HDMI>SDI converter to hook up a camera/camcorder with better optics. In my workplace we have Sony BRC-300’s, but since I won’t need PTZ remote control, maybe Sony/Canon camcorder with HDMI converted to SDI would be a better idea. SDI-outputting cameras are often expensive and have features I don’t need, do you think I should go for (perhaps cheaper) HDMI-outputting prosumer camera converted to SDI? In other words, would you choose versatility, better optics and perhaps lower price (HDMI cam) converted to SDI or a typical SDI camera head with no conversion?