Press Release: Kenneth Copeland Ministries - Spreading The Word With Help From Ensemble Designs

Grass Valley, California – April 16, 2007

When Kenneth Copeland Ministries was founded over 40 years ago, their mission was simple: to preach faith, love, healing, prosperity, redemption, righteousness, and the principles of Christian living. And after 40 years, that mission hasnÍt changed. The one thing that has changed is the way their message has traveled across the globe..

These days that message is delivered through webcasts, podcasts, and through KCM’s Believer’s Voice of Victory television broadcast – aided by Ensemble Designs’ BrightEye line of compact converters and Avenue™ tray-based signal integration system.

Senior Engineer Eric Stone described how the broadcasters at KCM put the systems to use: “We have eighteen or so BrightEye 16 A to D converters and another seventeen or eighteen BrightEye 25 D to A converters. We use them to take older or consumer gear into the SDI path. The 1-inch decks and beta decks are converted from analog to digital then directly routable in the plant. The entire plant is now SDI embedded.”

“The BrightEyes do a good job of disembedding and providing analog or AES out. The AES is routed to the audio suites for sweetening. We can select any of the eight audio channels going to surround sound. Audio is used as discreet channels through the process and then embedded to Dolby. Eight channels are also used for international broadcast. The Ukranian broadcast might be on channels 7/8, while Spanish is on channels 5/6, for example. The BrightEyes make it real easy. You just choose the audio outputs for whatever the output format is and go.”

“I like to mount the BrightEyes individually behind the rack, right by the piece of gear they are working with. That makes it easy for trouble shooting and simplifies wiring. We also use the Avenue 5400 as our main sync gen and tri-level sync gen,” Stone added.

“When I first got into television, a wise man told me that no-one ever got fired for buying Sony. The same is true for Ensemble. I’m very happy with their products. The one problem I had with a unit was resolved fast. Ensemble had another unit here before I even sent the other one off.”

Senior Technical Purchasing Agent Kelly Hemphill described KCM’s satisfaction in this way: “I just wish there were more companies like Ensemble. It’s like a family-owned business. The folks there genuinely love what they do. They love the gear and they love supporting their customers. From the dealer channel right on through to the factory, Ensemble is great to work with. We looked at other products but came right back to Ensemble.”

KCM also uses the Avenue 5400 as its main sync pulse generator for the facility. Ensemble Designs’ Avenue is 3RU and holds up to 10 modules. In addition to sync pulse generators and test signal generators, there are HD upconverters, audio embedders and several other modules useful for broadcast. The touch screen control panel and Avenue PC software offer control, monitoring and alarms with Ethernet and SNMP.