Sometimes you just walk into a trade show booth and have a tough time believing your eyes. That was my reaction at the Broadcast Microwave Services booth. There I saw HD video being transmitted from a roving camera with the company’s new 16MHz channel (dual 8MHz channel) high-def camera back transmitter. To say the images were stunning is an understatement, especially when you find out the video being transmitted was of two camera models giving a third a message over at the Thomson booth.
But that wasn’t the only pleasant surprise at the BMS booth. Right in the center of the booth attached to the top of a laptop computer was a two-channel diversity receiver with two antennas attached. Somehow, this handy little receiver missed my watchful eye at NAB.
Setting up this receiver is a matter of installing the BMS-developed Windows software application on the laptop and plugging the receiver into a laptop USB port, from which it draws power. Pop-up data of critical parameters and waveforms of the video being transmitted overlay the received video on the laptop display. Imagine using this diversity receiver to help a camera operator stay in range as he walks around his coverage area.
I spoke with BMS Europe Managing Director Rainer Horn about the diversity receiver and its applications in this podcast.
Related article: Technology Seminar - ENG
Intelsat and two of its partners, London-based music production company Control Room and Los Angeles-based video services integrator Coastal Media Group, were honored this week in Amsterdam with the IBC2008 Innovation Award for Content Delivery.
The trio received the award for the work they did last year to present “Live Earth: Concerts for a Climate in Crisis” in high definition worldwide with music acts originating from every continent.
I had the chance to swing by the Intelsat booth and sit down with company regional VP for Broadcast Solutions Ron Rosenthal to discuss the honor and its implications. Given the scope of the project, it would be hard to argue that HD contribution and distribution satellite services haven’t come of age.
In this audio podcast, Rosenthal and I also explore what that means to occasional use customers, like broadcasters that field HD SNG crews.
Related article: Live Earth media architecture unites cultures and countries across the globe
Pulling off the 2008 Beijing Olympics required a lot of communications, and that was on the mind of director of Riedel Communications marketing and communications Andreas Hilmer.
The opening and closing ceremonies required 18,000 Riedel FMR 1000 radio receivers to coordinate the movements and actions of all the performers participating.
Hilmer offers more insight on the Olympics as well as information about the company’s new Acrobat DECT-based wireless intercom in this audio podcast.
Thomson declared 2008 to be the year of HD sport on the eve of the opening of IBC2008 in Amsterdam.
Gathered at the Amsterdam Arena home to the city’s Ajax professional soccer team, the company’s management laid out exactly why to the press. Pointing to HD coverage of the just-completed 2008 Beijing Olympics, Euro2008 soccer championships and Wimbledon Championships, Thomson made the point that HD has entered the mainstream of television around the world.
In keeping with the theme, the company turned to a couple of skilled soccer ball kickers — which Thomson Grass Valley VP of communications Laura Barber-Miller referred to as keepsie-upsies — to illustrate the effectiveness of Thomson’s Grass Valley LDK 8300 HD Super SloMo camera. more
For this year’s Democratic and Republican national conventions, Reuters relied on IP-packet transport from Denver and St. Paul, MN, via Genesis Network’s fiber optic network.
While it’s tough to say whether or not this is the first time IP backhaul has been used at a political convention, its application at the events certainly among the first. In Amsterdam, Genesis Networks was exhibiting at the Cisco stand where it was trumpeting its involvement in this year’s political extravaganzas.
Company VP marketing and business development Brittany Neal discusses what the Genesis Networks delivered to Reuters at the conventions and the advantages of IP backhaul of contribution level video and audio in this podcast.
IBC2008 offers a glimpse of a new way for viewers and IPTV operators to get a grip — literally — on television viewing at the Orca Interactive stand.
The IPTV middleware provider is showing its new Compass content discovery tool changes the equation when it comes to choosing what to watch. A replacement for EPG and older ways of finding out what’s on the tube — oops, I mean panel — Compass blends a variety of content recommendation engines to build a customized menu of program selections based an individual user’s preferences.
One of those engines taps into the runaway popularity of social networking to bring to the television a very ordinary occurrence, namely friends recommending you watch a specific program or episode. In the Stone Age, I remember friends actually talking about “Dallas” and who shot JR. Did I see this or that episode that held a clue? more
But that wasn’t the only pleasant surprise at the BMS booth. Right in the center of the booth attached to the top of a laptop computer was a two-channel diversity receiver with two antennas attached. Somehow, this handy little receiver missed my watchful eye at NAB.
