Camcorder Spotting - CNN Uses VX2000 in Kabul

by Robin Liss
Published on Sep 22, 2001 12:00 AM



I was watching a report on CNN about their reporter Nic Robertson and his amazing reporting live from Kabul Afghanistan immediately following the horrible attacks on the World Trade Center. In the report, they showed lots of footage of the equipment that they used. Hooked up to a satellite videophone was a Sony VX2000 consumer camcorder.

It seems that one point goes to the VX2000 supporters - now that we have "official" conformation that CNN is using these things. We've known that the networks have used consumer level, small camcorders for their international reporting in dangerous locations, but this is one of the first times that we've been able to identify a specific model.

Robertson was in Kabul doing a unrelated report on American's being prosecuted by the Taliban for promoting the Christian religion. He happened to be there however the same day of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. CNN was the only news organization to have a television reporter in the country at the time. Afterwards, he filed a report about being kicked out of the country, and in it he talked about all the equipment he used.

Lately CNN has been using videophone technology a lot to do reporting from areas where a full satellite uplink is not available. The picture quality is degraded and the frame rate is very slow but it does deliver pictures from places that they've never been able to deliver before. It seems now that in addition to using inexpensive means of transporting the pictures - CNN is also using consumer level camcorders to acquire them, pretty neat. It's proof of how the professional and the consumer world of videography are converging in quality.