--
42 years after being named for its neighborhood within the city of Edmonton, Alberta, the church originally known as Mill Woods Assembly changed its identity to Hope City Church last year to reflect its expansion into new communities. Wanting to maximize the quality of the live video being fed to its new satellite campus, Hope City purchased three Z-HD5500 cameras from Hitachi Kokusai Electric America, Ltd. (Hitachi Kokusai) to capture its Sunday worship services for remote distribution and in-venue image magnification.
Volunteer Rebecca Mossop captures a Hope City Church worship service with a Z-HD5500 camera from Hitachi Kokusai
A total of roughly 3400 congregants attend three Sunday morning services at the Mill Woods campus each week, while up to 300 more come to services at the newer Terwilligar location that opened in October 2018. While the Terwilligar site has its own pastor and live music, the centerpieces of its services are time-delayed, live feeds of Lead Pastor Phil Kniesel's sermons from Mill Woods. Already displeased with the quality limitations of their existing cameras, the launch of the new campus provided the impetus for the church to upgrade.
Our old cameras didn't allow us to achieve the quality we wanted, with insufficient low-light capabilities and consumer-grade controls, said Dan Mandryk, technical director at Hope City Church. We needed to replace them, and our expansion gave us the big push to get new cameras on board. Video enables us to multiply our presence, allowing us to deliver the same message across campuses while still creating unique experiences at each location. We wanted to go to a broadcast-grade camera because the video feed would essentially stand in for a live pastor, so must be high-quality.
Taking note of the accolades that the Z-HD5500 was receiving in trade press, Hope City Church knew they needed to investigate it. We narrowed our choice to two major brands, and Hitachi Kokusai worked closely with our dealer, Applied Electronics, to put together a package that met our needs at a price that worked for us, explained Mandryk. The Hitachi cameras' ability to integrate with the Ross Dashboard control system was also important, as we are considering adding a Ross switcher in the future.
Hope City's three Z-HD5500s are now stationed on pedestals in the Mill Woods campus' 1235-seat main sanctuary. In addition to serving the live video link between campuses, the cameras also power IMAG for the auditorium's two 20-foot-wide, rear-projection side screens and 19-foot-wide center screen. An additional 26-foot screen in an overflow room is used for special events, while services are also streamed live via the Church Online platform and available on-demand on YouTube.
Mandryk highlights the Z-HD5500s' ease of use as one of his favorite attributes of the cameras. The best part has been how volunteer-friendly they are, even though they're high-end cameras, he elaborated. We have operators who have never touched a camera before, and focus is always one of the hardest things for new camera users to master. The Focus Assist feature on the Z-HD5500 has made it so much easier for them, giving them something to check their focus against.
The exceptional video quality of the Hitachi cameras has also earned praise from the church and its attendees. The Z-HD5500s deliver an obvious quality boost from our previous cameras, said Mandryk. The color reproduction is also fabulous, as we finally see on video exactly what we see in the room. The first day we put them in, our congregants could see the difference, and were excited to see more vibrant colors.
Mandryk also commends the Hitachi cameras' handling of lighting conditions at both ends of the spectrum - their sensitivity in low-light situations, as well as their ability to acquire flicker-free images against a mix of LED lighting. We push the boundaries on lighting, so sometimes we have to get a shot where there's not a whole lot of light, and the Z-HD5500's low-light handling is far superior to our old cameras, he explained. Conversely, we use a lot of LED lighting of varying quality in our sets - from high-end professional lights all the way down to do-it-yourself LED tape lights in our set pieces - and we've never had a problem with these cameras capturing great video.
Summing up Hope City Church's satisfaction, Mandryk shares that the Z-HD5500s have fulfilled all of their objectives. The Hitachi cameras have elevated the quality of our visual experiences for our in-person and online congregants, while enabling an exceptional video link to our remote campus.
About Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc.
Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a company that manufactures broadcasting systems, security and surveillance systems, wireless communications and information systems. Fiscal 2018 sales totaled 85,932 million Yen. For more information on Hitachi Kokusai Electric Inc., please visit the companys website at http://www.hitachi-kokusai.co.jp/global/en/index.html.
###
North America Stories
01/06/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
-- 
