This year Sachtler, now a Vitec brand, is celebrating its 50th year of offering support and camera head products to broadcasters and film producers. On display in a glass case at the booth was an original wooden-legged tripod designed by company founder Wendelin Sachtler circa 1958.
Fast forwarding to 2008, the company was highlighting its new SOOM HiPod system, a 12.7lb four-in-one camera support for electronic newsgathering (ENG) applications as well as the new Reporter 8 LED portable/onboard light and kit. The new LED light kit comes with two interchangeable LEDs — daylight and tungsten — and several other components, including an optical module to change the light’s beam angle.
In the Artemis range, the company showed enhancements for its ACT 2 spring arm, including springs that are easier to change out and new carbon fiber arms, which according to the company’s Ali Amahdi, allows the arm to be more stable as the speed of the user increases.
This morning I met up with OCTOPUS CEO Peter Stokuc to talk about his company’s updated OCTOPUS6 newsroom computer system. Peter says that for the new OCTOPUS system the core functions have been revamped to make operation quicker and more intuitive. Even with all these changes, OCTOPUS6 is still backwards compatible. The key traits of OCTOPUS, according to Peter, are that its platform independent and its solid MOS protocol implementation.
Axcera introduced the 6X Series liquid-cooled solid-state television transmitter that uses the company’s frequency agile exciter and LDMOS devices for broadband operation across the entire UHF band.
The showed a 6X transmitter that supports 7kW DVB-T, 10kW ATSC and 20kW analog operation on the floor. It will support power levels up to 30kW DVB-T and 40kW ATSC. According to company president David Neff, an important feature of the 6X transmitter is its relatively small form factor.
Axcera also highlighted the fact it’s supporting five different transmission technologies for mobile TV broadcasts with a red-hot car receiving mobile TV broadcast transmission as part of the NAB2008 demonstration of the technology.
Neff discussed mobile TV transmission, the final push to complete the DTV transition in the United States as well as a recently released report from research organization Centris showing that DTV coverage patterns may leave millions of viewers without over-the-air television reception.
I ended yesterday in the Fujitsu booth (SU10928), where I met with Dan Dalton, Fujitsu’s director of new product development. The big thing going on at Fujitsu is it’s new IP-9500 MPEG-4 AVC low latency encoder for HD satellite newsgathering.
He showed me a demo of how a user could put HD in an SD feed. There’s an option for low latency, encoding and decoding video content at less than 300ms. And it can handle HD video from as low as 4Mb/s and as high 27Mb/s.
Listen to an audio clip of Dan talking about the Fujitsu IP-9500.
I just finished meeting with Shotoku Broadcast Systems. The company’s president, Naoki Ebimoto, was kind enough — and patient enough — to let me play with their range of pedestals and pan/tilt heads. (It’s one thing to get to see the equipment in person, but it’s so much better to actually be able to test it out.)
Shotoku’s latest launch to the U.S. market is the TRP-100 robotic pedestal. It’s designed for all studio applications, including news, sports and current affairs. I can tell you from my own experience that the pedestal is very smooth. It is controlled by Shotoku’s TR-8T Control System, and it allows full X, Y and height camera movement, as well as conventional pan and tilt motion.
It features a navigation system that is easily calibrated within seconds using a target-tile placed anywhere on the studio floor. Full manual operation, with or without power, is supported for all axis, optimizing flexibility of use and easy maintenance.
Bitcentral unveiled Air Now, a backpack-based digital news gathering system weighing less than 10lbs, which will let a reporter transmit live reports via EvDO wireless channels from the field.
The product, according to the company’s Ken Lee, is like an ENG truck in a backpack. It consists of a laptop computer loaded with special encoding software, a cellular transmitting box and a battery that will power the unit for 2.5 hours. Air Now streams a live Windows Media 9 stream via an EvDO cellular network connection to an IP address at a TV station or elsewhere. According to Lee, the system produces useable results at data rates as low as 280kb/s.
I happened to be visiting Bitcentral when Andrew Lombard, chief engineer of McGraw Hill-owned KGTV in San Diego, was wrapping up a visit. Lombard said he was impressed with the performance of Air Now, and “looking down the road” could envision equipping journalists in San Diego and at the company’s Indianapolis station with the product. Lombard added he would help the company in its continued development of Air Now.
IneoQuest’s mission, according to Calvin Harrison, IneoQuest’s vice president of marketing and business development, is to create products for users that help them improve their ROI, deploy services quickly and decrease operating expenses. To that end, the company has created modules that monitor a signal and, when a problem occurs, pinpoint exactly where things went wrong. One of these products is the new Cricket 8-VSB, which offers confidence monitoring of 8-VSB broadcast signals. It provides verification and troubleshooting of studio-to-transmitter link and RF coverage area. Listen to what Calvin Harrison has to say about the Cricket 8-VSB.
Broadcast Pix showed their HD versions of the expanded Slate switcher family. The new Slate HD switchers provide an easy and cost effective way to create compelling live HD video. Their file-based architecture streamlines live production workflow by completely integrating the included switcher, CG, clip stores, still stores and monitoring while seamlessly networking them with content from edit bays. The first Slate HD switcher was used at the Sundance Film Festival.
Each of the three new Slate HD models includes: a switcher with up to six keyers and DVEs, multi-view monitoring, a Harris Inscriber CG, and a clip store. The switchers’ hybrid I/O supports: 1080i, 720p, SD, DVI and VGA, plus analog output in composite, Y/C and component. It can add: HD and SD analog inputs and 1080p output. Both 16:9 and 4:3 content can be mixed while preserving the native aspect ratio of each element.
The editors and writers of Broadcast Engineering post live from the 2008 NAB Show in Las Vegas as the news happens. Check back throughout the day for the latest in industry news, reports from press conferences and product introductions.
This year Sachtler, now a Vitec brand, is celebrating its 50th year of offering support and camera head products to broadcasters and film producers. On display in a glass case at the booth was an original wooden-legged tripod designed by company founder Wendelin Sachtler circa 1958.
I ended yesterday in the 
