In the darkness of an Amsterdam club, Omneon announced a new family of MPEG-2 MediaPorts for its Spectrum and MediaDeck video servers. Omneon throws one of those parties that you’d love to be invited to.

At the event, Geoff Stedman, Omneon senior vice president for products and markets said the company had improved their MPEG-2 encode/decode MediaPorts by doubling the ingest density to four channels, plus they added the ability of the 5320 and 5220 series to generate 1-Mbps MPEG-1 proxies in real time. “With all four channels now available for either record or play in any combination, we offer our customers a more economical ingest server solution,” said Geoff.

The Omneon MediaPort 5320 series offers up to four channels of HD/SD record and play, in any combination, in a compact 1RU package. With MPEG-2 codec technology, the units deliver flexibility for those facilities seeking HD and SD ingest solutions, playout servers, or hybrid environments. Recorded material can be stored in MXF or QuickTime files, ensuring compatibility with third-party editors, storage, and other broadcast and production equipment. The ports provide support for HD bit rates from 18Mb/s to 100Mb/s (4:2:0 or 4:2:2 chroma sampling).

The Omneon MediaPort 5220 series shares the SD functionality and compact 1RU design of the 5320 series, supporting SD MPEG-2 encoding and decoding at rates from 3Mb/s to 50Mb/s. The MediaPort 5220 may be upgraded to an HD-capable model through a simple software upgrade.

Both MediaPort components may be used as Omneon MediaDeck modules, allowing the MediaDeck system to serve as an HD and SD ingest server, HD and SD delay server, edit platform, edge server, or other media server requiring moderate storage in a convenient integrated package.

Omneon is showing these and other products in stand 8.B60.

Related articles: Omneon to introduce new MediaPort series; Omneon to introduce new MediaPort servers at IBC; Omneon at NAB