This afternoon I met with Victor Herring, senior director, Video Solutions Group, Fujitsu Computer Products of America. He showed me the company’s new IP-900, a compact MPEG-4 AVC encoder for real-time IP transmission of HD and SD content for news gathering and remote applications.

The encoder features low power consumption and a compact size. At 1RU and half a rack wide, “you save money and precious rack space,” Herring said.

The IP-900 is designed to be cost efficient for mobile television newsgathering. Its versatility and high-performance capabilities enable broadcasters to deploy the encoder in unfavorable environments to ensure that the entire transmission is intact.

At the MRC booth, I had a little fun ribbing Paul Furman, systems application engineer, about his badge which proclaimed him to be “The Greek God of Microwave.”

The tone went from jocular to serious when the conversation turned to the integration of IP technology into digital microwave links, however. MRC demonstrated a digital diversity receive package as part of an interesting, indoor mockup of the inside of an ENG van on the one hand and a ENG newsroom control system. more

Reporters in the field who edit their stories with Apple’s Final Cut Pro now have an easy way to input their raw footage into a MacBook Pro for editing.

With the growing presence of Final Cut Pro in newsrooms across the country, Matrox thought it was only natural to bet broadcasters would like to take the NLE into the field. From the appearance of its booth and the interest level in its new MXO2 interface box, Matrox won that bet. more

This year Sachtler, now a Vitec brand, is celebrating its 50th year of offering support and camera head products to broadcasters and film producers. On display in a glass case at the booth was an original wooden-legged tripod designed by company founder Wendelin Sachtler circa 1958.

Fast forwarding to 2008, the company was highlighting its new SOOM HiPod system, a 12.7lb four-in-one camera support for electronic newsgathering (ENG) applications as well as the new Reporter 8 LED portable/onboard light and kit. The new LED light kit comes with two interchangeable LEDs — daylight and tungsten — and several other components, including an optical module to change the light’s beam angle.

In the Artemis range, the company showed enhancements for its ACT 2 spring arm, including springs that are easier to change out and new carbon fiber arms, which according to the company’s Ali Amahdi, allows the arm to be more stable as the speed of the user increases.

Listen to a short audio clip from Ali Amahdi.

Related articles: Sachtler to introduce SOOM camera support; New Sachtler SooM offers four-in-one camera support; HDV is becoming a ‘key format’ of the broadcast camera market.

I ended yesterday in the Fujitsu booth (SU10928), where I met with Dan Dalton, Fujitsu’s director of new product development. The big thing going on at Fujitsu is it’s new IP-9500 MPEG-4 AVC low latency encoder for HD satellite newsgathering.

He showed me a demo of how a user could put HD in an SD feed. There’s an option for low latency, encoding and decoding video content at less than 300ms. And it can handle HD video from as low as 4Mb/s and as high 27Mb/s.

Listen to an audio clip of Dan talking about the Fujitsu IP-9500.

Related articles: J SPORTS Broadcasting chooses FOR-A for 2007 Rugby World Cup; HD SNG can benefit from H.264 and DVB-S2, Fujitsu pair says; Fujitsu debuts IP-9500 HD encoder.

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.

Listen to an audio clip from Ken Lee.

Little did I know when I showed up at my appointment today with Tony Iwamoto, VP of sales, marketing and technical services for IDX, that I would be checking out two particular products that were so new that they had literally landed in Vegas just in time for NAB.

For this first product, a little background. Last year, when I went to visit IDX, a provider of batteries, power products and chargers, I remember seeing the Elite line of lithium-ion batteries as well as a wireless camera transmitter/receiver system. The wireless system was being highlighted for its high picture quality and low latency, and when I mean low latency, I mean the latency was just barely enough to be perceivable. But it was still a pretty nice, functional system. I bring this up because at the IDX booth today, I was introduced to the CAM-WAVE system, an uncompressed HD/SD-SDI wireless transmitter/receiver system. more

I just watched a demo at the Maxell booth (C8428) for the new iDVR. I spoke with John Eulberg about the product. The unit connects via a bidirectional USB or eSATA adapter to a camera capable of delivering 10-bit, 4:2:2 master-quality video and native full HD video. It can store 160GB of data with a transfer rate of 540Mb/s.

John says that the unit was create to pass military toughness specifications. It has a drop protection of up to 4ft thanks to a hard plastic shell and specially designed shock isolation systems.