Archive of the News Category

Even airports are getting in on the echo-friendly push. Mowing grass is out at San Jose, Seattle, Boston, Nashville, Phoenix, Indianapolis airports.

The solution? Goats.

According to Wednesday’s story in USA Today, airports are planting more native plants and installing fewer grassy lawns, which require power mowing. These airports then use goats and sheep to keep their lawns manicured. So, on your trip home, if you spot a goat next to the runway, don’t worry, just wave. He’s supposed to be there.

The best thing about conventions is being there. The worst thing about conventions is getting there.

After enduring 22hr, door-to-door travel getting home, I’m ready to endorse children-free airplanes. I was unfortunate enough to encounter several of the most ignorant, selfish parents with small children in all my years of flying.

In both legs of my return flight, there were multiple 3-yr-old-something’s who were allowed to totally disrupt the flights with their screeching, screaming behavior. I watched (and listened) as these acoustic terrorists held all of us passengers hostage, in one case for nine hours. No one, including the kids’ parents, worked to temper the behavior of these obnoxious brats.

I say ban kids who can’t behave themselves (and the parents who refuse to make them behave) to the airplane’s cargo hold. Heck, the kids will probably like it because they’ can play with the other animals there.

Thomson Grass Valley has expanded its line of Triton compact routing switchers with the debut of the new Thomson Grass Valley Triton Plus series. Triton Plus has a reduced frame size, but expanded scalability and support for the highest quality AES110 Ohm audio and 3 Gb/s video signals. The new small footprint router is ideal for demanding AV environments where small size, low weight and affordability are critical. more

Thomson Grass Valley released the K2 Dyno replay controller. The compact, cost-effective next-generation controller coupled with the new K2 Summit production client is designed to help sports producers and other professionals capture live events in crystal-clear HD resolutions and instantly play them out at variable speeds for critical analysis during fast-paced events. It is ideally suited for HD sports production trucks and shared storage production facilities. more

There are few companies who still provide tutorial, non-biased and corporate-mention-free publications. Quantel is the leader in this select group with the Fact Book.

Roger Thornton announced the company’s latest Fact Book, marking the publication’s 20th anniversary. Personally, I can’t believe its been 20 years since the book’s first edition. Certainly I wasn’t around to see it then.…or was I?

Edited by former Quantel person himself, Bob Pank, the book is a hotly sought after resource. While I don’t have issue #1, I’ve have managed to snag several versions as they came out over the years, mainly for its impartial teaching of technology. more

One of only a few hot topics at this year’s show was stereoscopic or 3D television. Leading in that arena is Quantel. The company was demonstrating the world’s first Stereo3D broadcast server. The development adds a key component to the broadcast Stereo3D production chain as interest in Stereo3D broadcasting rapidly increases.

The Stereo3D server is based on Quantel’s existing sQ server platform and supports realtime ingest and playout of multiple channels of stereo HD content under the control of Quantel’s own sQ Record and sQ Play applications. more

Need to dispose of some old electronics? Today, you can’t just dump worn out equipment in the trash. Communities don’t like lead and other toxic chemicals being sent to the local land fill. Fortunately, at least one broadcast vendor is offering broadcasters an eco-friendly solution.

In talking to Thomson Grass Valley’s Jeff Rosica, senior vice president of marketing and technology, and Laura Barber-Miller, vice president communications, yesterday, I learned that their company supports an electronic recycling program. It’s called Take Back. When you purchase equipment from Grass Valley, the company will take the replaced old hardware and turn it over to an authorized recycler.

Nifty solution!

However, if that doesn’t work for you, see my September editorial for a different, albeit less efficient, recycling idea. Hint, it involves a chainsaw and perhaps a thousand small envelopes.

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.

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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.