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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
Today is themed Content Production day. Hurray for content producers! Sessions get underway at 09:30 with Mobile TV business models in Room A. Another parallel session on Mobile exhibit hall “innovations” starts in Room L at 10:00. The focus of many engineers and content producers is a tapeless production workflow. The IBC tackles that huge topic at 11:30 in the Forum room. Sessions continue throughout the day on various aspects of content production in several of the IBC meeting rooms. At 18:10, a special live 3D HD conference call with US-located Jeffrey Katzenberg, film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation and IBC interviewers in the Auditorium. Don’t miss this exciting, first-of-a-kind technology demonstration.
Our time at IBC starts with a round of press conferences. For the kick off, Thomson took us to the Amsterdam Arena, the home of world famous Ajax soccer team. The connection here is sport, and Thomson cameras. The new LDK8300 shoots at three times frame rate, but also incorporate flicker reduction technology to deal with the problems that ac lighting causes when your not shooting at power frequency. The IT-enabled Infinity camera adds support for 24P, opening opportunities to use the camera in “film-style” productions. Because JPEG2K codec is 10-bit, color grading can be applied dowstream, a key differentiator from the 8-bit MPEG record formats. New developments in the K2 server line, again in the sports area. The new K2 Dyno slo-mo controller marks a broadening of the server apps away from straight playout into the production server space. We left the stadium by very hot bus to the next hot venue (Amsterdam is hot and humid — very little air conn), the Harris press event. Story here was more 3 gig, as broadcasters look to future proof infrastructure investment. The NEXIO AMP platform in version 2.0, now 3Gb ready. For European broadcasters, Harris has returned to the transmitter market with ROHSS-compliant products with a new digital exciter range, software programmable for different modulation standards, and more efficient — saving on those huge power bills.
 Thursday is the first day of press conferences, and this year we have a first. Thompson Grass Valley gets the award for holding a press conference in the largest, most difficult to find, fewest-occupied seats of the conference venue (25,000 or so seats). It also gets the award for the first IBC (or NAB for that matter) where there was grass enough for everybody—but you couldn’t touch it.
All jokes aside, Thomson held their press conference in the scenic Amsterdam ArenA, home to the city’s football (or as Americans say, soccer) franchise. On a sun-filled day, Thomson officials announced several key sales and new products for this year’s IBC. more
 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. more
Let me tell you about some of the press conferences I went to tonight. Now if you’re a member of the press then you’re given exclusive access to press conferences at the major tradeshows. Some companies keep their new product releases top secret until those press conferences. Tonight I went to the Thomson Grass Valley, Harris and Omneon press conferences.  Thomson Grass Valley held its event at the Amsterdam ArenA, a stadium with the capacity for about 55,000 seats during sports matches. It was a huge soccer stadium and when we pulled up I half expected to see David Beckham standing outside.
So why did Grass Valley hold its press conference there? Because according to the company, 2008 was the year of sports in HD. The company used the stadium to demonstrate its new Elite HD camera series, which has the ability of 3X super slow mo. They had a couple soccer players on hand, bouncing the ball back and forth, which the company showed in 3X super slow mo on a big screen to the press. more
Welcome to the Broadcast Engineering IBC blog for 2008. During the next six days, this blog will take you inside meeting rooms, behind exhibitions and into board rooms to learn the latest in broadcast and production technology and management. In one place, you’ll be able to follow Broadcast Engineering editors and writers as they experience all that IBC has to offer. First of all, let us not ever forget this important anniversary date, September 11. It was seven years ago today that the United States was viciously attacked in New York; Washington, DC; and near Shanksville, PA. Almost 3000 people died in that one-day event. From stock broker to restaurant waiter to broadcast engineers working on the top floors of the Twin Towers, families lost mothers, fathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, children, friends and co-workers. Take time today to remember the sacrifice of those who were unfairly, and too soon, taken from our lives. Now, let’s look at what’s on tap for today, Thursday, September 11. more
There’s a lot to look forward to this week at IBC. Here are some highlights that Broadcast Engineering has covered recently.
News and event announcements: Product announcements:
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The editors and writers of Broadcast Engineering post live from the IBC2008 in Amsterdam as the news happens. Check back throughout the day for the latest in industry news, reports from press conferences and product introductions.
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