When it comes to “hot” mobile TV products on the show floor this year, the focus seems to be mostly on exciters and multiplexers. This makes sense, since many broadcasters already have the transmission infrastructure in place to run a mobile TV service: They just need to integrate mobile TV-compatible exciters and multiplexers into their transmission networks in order to get services up and running.
Still, I’d feel remiss if I did not mention how some of the transmitter, antenna and power amplifier manufacturers are playing a role in mobile TV deployment. Thus far, I’ve met with a few companies in each of these spaces at NAB, and all have something to offer with regards to mobile TV. more
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.
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.
I visited the RF Technologies booth yesterday afternoon, and learned the company is releasing a new low RFR SFNstar broadband slot antenna. It has up to 7 channels (42 MHz) of bandwidth at 700 MHz, and is designed for use with upper and lower 700 MHz mobile TV networks, as well as mobile video and DTV transmissions. Probably what a broadcaster would find most handy about the antenna is that its bandwidth is wide enough to handle multiple 700 MHZ transmissions. Also, because of its low RFR performance, it is possible to place it on rooftops and short towers and not run afoul of radiation safety thresholds.
A typical 10-bay broadband SFNstar antenna with a 50 kW ERP and mounted with a center of radiation of 22 feet above ground or rooftop will produce less than 50% of the maximum general public RFR limits. This gives broadcasters looking to deploy an SFN network as part of a mobile TV network much more flexibility in terms of where they can mount the antennas.
RF Technologies is offering the Broadband SFNstar antennas with input power ratings from 7.5 to 50 kW, allowing several DTV or mobile TV transmissions from a single antenna. The antenna also uses circular polarization technology, so no matter what direction an end user turns his or her mobile device receiver, the coverage remains the same.
Space in 2GHz band is becoming tight, but Link Research wants broadcasters to knot that they’re not stuck. 7GHz is just as good as 2GHz in most applications, says Mark Anderson. I met with him and Newlin Warden to talk about Link Research’s current offerings: the L1050 HD/SD MPEG-2 encoder, the XPu mini transmitter for on-board applications and the L1500 wireless camera transmitter introduced last year.
My first visit of the day was with Sophie Lion-Poulain and Christophe Poulain. We dicsussed three new products: the GOLDENEAGLE ATSC, NAVIGATOR DVB-SH and RELIO with SCRIPTEASY V2.
GOLDENEAGLE ATSC offers digital TV monitoring for 8-VSB and MPEG-2 for multiple stations with centralized managment. RF and MPEG-2 monitoring and transmitter remote control are all provided in the same unit.
NAVIGATOR DVB-SH is a portable T&M unit for DVB-SH developed inconjunction with TeamCast. The portable unit can be used with any frequency spectrum below 3GHz in terrestrial, satellite or hybrid networks.
RELIO is a managment unit with 64 digital inputs, 64 digital outputs, 24 analog inputs, four serial ports, two Ethernet ports, four USB ports and one phone line connector. The SCRIPTEASY graphical software includes the MASTERVIEW graphical user interface, which allows felxible creation for users to see information from and control remote equipment over a network connection.
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.
Space in 2GHz band is becoming tight, but 
My first visit of the day was with Sophie Lion-Poulain and Christophe Poulain. We dicsussed three new products: the GOLDENEAGLE ATSC, NAVIGATOR DVB-SH and RELIO with SCRIPTEASY V2.
