Multiformat Television Switcher

摘要

A multiformat television switcher adds an up-converter 12, a down-converter 16 and an auxiliary selector 14 to an existing master control switcher 10 to provide the ability to provide both a standard format output video signal (NTSC, PAL SECAM, etc.) and a HDTV format output video signal corresponding to a selected input video signal from a plurality of input video sources which include both standard and HDTV formats. The master control switcher provides a selected one of the standard format input video signals to a standard format input of the auxiliary selector and to the up-converter, and provides a control signal to the auxiliary selector. The HDTV format input video signals and the HDTV format video signal output form the up-converter are applied to HDTV inputs of the auxiliary selector. The auxiliary selector provides an HDTV format output video signal, selected from the HDTV inputs, and a corresponding standard format output video signal, selected from the standard format inputs, according to the video signal source selected by an operator at the master control switcher. A down-converter converts the HDTV format output video signal to a standard format video signal that is applied to other standard format inputs of the auxiliary selector. When the operator selects the video signal source, it is either up-converted or down-converted as necessary and output in both formats by the auxiliary selector.