Not every company at this year’s NAB Show has the newest, hottest technology. And as Mark Richards, international broadcast manager for the UK’s Fischer Connectors, told me, it’s often not worth it to release a new product at a show just for the sake of releasing a new product.
Fischer, though, is a special case, considering that it works in connectors and, because of this, a particular challenge for the company breaking into the U.S. market is based on the different standards here in the States. To its credit, the company did showcase some new products at IBC this year. But Richards doesn’t want to rush anything this year, preferring to wait to release a proven, reliable product than to just whip something up for the show that won’t be available until who knows when (he says the company should have some new technology to highlight by next year’s NAB). more…
Although this was the seventh year Broadcast Engineering held its Excellence Awards contest, this was the first year that we held a ceremony to honor the winners.
The Excellence Awards have become the industry’s standard of measurement for new facilities, recognizing innovation, high-quality design and construction. Entries include those featuring telco, cable, broadcast and production facilities.
Broadcast Engineering presented the winners with a plaque at the Penton Media booth #SL8328. Following the ceremony, winners were treated to a champagne toast and fruit and cheese party.
If you’re interested in participating in the 2009 Excellence Awards contest, please contact Angela Snell for more information at angela.snell@penton.com.
I came to the Belden thinking I’d prepared for my interview by brushing up on Belden’s latest cables. Boy, was I wrong. There is a lot going on at this booth this year, and two of the biggest attractions aren’t cable products at all. The three big product groups I looked at were: recently acquired Hirschmann’s MACH 1000 and 4000 switchers, new modular racks and the introduction of the 1855p (the plenum version of it’s 1855a).
First, let’s start with Hirschmann. Tim Toth, director of sales, told me this was Hirschmann’s first showing at NAB. Hirschmann offers Ethernet switchers and routers for mission critical applications. The group’s goal is to eliminate single points of failure in Ethernet networks. The MACH 1000 and 4000 are created to provide 99.999 percent reliability, even under extreme circumstances. The fanless MACH 1000 has an operating temperature range of -40 degrees F to 185 degrees F. The switchers also have a handy USB flash drive backup setup. For more, check out a short audio clip of Tim talking about the MACH 1000 and 4000.
Next, on to Belden’s new racks. Product line manager and engineer Denis Blouin says that Belden’s goal in making these racks was to provide enclosures designed with broadcasters’ needs in mind. And the well-thought-out setup for cable placement and flow is to be expected from racks being designed by a cable maker. Denis showed me the ultra-slim truck rack, which has the option of being made from aluminum. All the rack frames include the company’s Quick Mount System for cable placement, allowing a cable to be attached anywhere a user wants. For more, check out a short audio clip from Denis about the racks.
And, yes, there were cables too. The company introduced new HDMI cables for HD audio and video. It has also completely updated its Brilliance Tactical Fiber Optic Cables. And Marc Stringer, market manager, told me that Belden will soon be offering the 1855p.
Inlet Technologies has announced two major initiatives at the NAB Show. Neil Selvin, COO, and Andy Beach, director of product management, first discussed the debut of Armanda, which is an approach to encoding workflow management. The workflow is designed to enhance the hands-off automation that is required to support high-volume operations. An easy-to-use interface and documented APIs will allow organizations to easily tie their controls into existing operations. Armanda provides for pre-encoding, which includes capture and analysis, file verification and metadata extraction; encoding, which includes template creation and management, distributed encoding, job scheduling and priority, and load balancing and node management; and post-encoding, which includes quality control, content encryption and document records, and packaging and publishing.
Selvin and Beach then discussed the availability of two additions to the company’s Spinnaker family of live streaming appliances — the Spinnaker 4000 and 7000. The Spinnaker 4000 introduces ASI and IP input into the Spinnaker product line, while the Spinnaker 7000 supports high-definition. Inlet also has introduced a third format to the Spinnaker family — H.264. The inclusion of this codec in its live encoding product provides content creators with more options for how they deliver streaming media.
My first appointment of the day was with Tamihiko Ogawa and Hisashi Kasahara from NTT Electronics (SU10220). The company’s big introduction this year are the AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV HVE9100 encoder and HVD9100 decoder. One of key features the men emphasized was that they feature 4:2:2 chroma for high-quality professional broadcast. The units are compact, lightweight and supports a wide range of applications, including MPEG-2.
In their booth you can see a series of displays showing the encoders and decoders. The first screen shows the original video footage. The second shows the video at 45Mb/s, 4:2:2 and 1920 x 1080. The third is at 18Mb/s, 4:2:2 and 1920 x 1080. And the fourth is at 8Mb/s, 4:2:0 and 1440 x 1080.
The HVT9100, an MPEG-2 to AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV real-time transcoder is another relatively new addition to the NTT lineup. It transcodes, while maintaining picture quality with minimal dealy in real time.
Update: NTT’s HVE9100/HVD9100 H.264 encoders won a Pick Hit award!
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.
Sunday is always the exception to the rule of my typical NAB experience. For the past 20 plus years, I spend Monday through Thursday running from appointment to appointment spread throughout the massive Las Vegas Convention Center that makes the convention –to me- more like a marathon than an industry gathering. But Sunday is different –particularly Sunday morning.
For the past several years, back-to-back press conferences are held in one specific meeting room on the upper level of the north hall of the convention center. Every hour on the hour, a new press conference put on by a different vendor begins. No running around; no frenetic activity. Just sit there and let the information flow. more…
Solid State Logic today announced the successful integration of their Gravity NLE with Omneon’s Spectrum video server providing a streamlined workflow for media operations. The Gravity system oversees all asset management of media, tracking and facilitating the workflow from ingest through production editing while the Omneon media servers provide ingest and playout functionality.
Solid State Logic’s Gravity system is a comprehensive production asset management system that features a picon based - format independent, cataloging, indexing, editing, and playout system with capabilities of local or remote encoding, transcoding and database management. Gravity enables demanding media operations to automate and streamline the movement of content through their operation, and in large enterprises provides the ability to easily manage and repurpose content as necessary through the production workflow.
Space in 2GHz band is becoming tight, but Link Research wants broadcasters to knot that they’re not stuck. 7GHz is just as good as 2GHz in most applications, says Mark Anderson. I met with him and Newlin Warden to talk about Link Research’s current offerings: the L1050 HD/SD MPEG-2 encoder, the XPu mini transmitter for on-board applications and the L1500 wireless camera transmitter introduced last year.
The editors and writers of Broadcast Engineering post live from the NAB Show in Las Vegas 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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Although this was the seventh year Broadcast Engineering held its Excellence Awards contest, this was the first year that we held a ceremony to honor the winners.
I came to the 
Next, on to Belden’s new racks. Product line manager and engineer Denis Blouin says that Belden’s goal in making these racks was to provide enclosures designed with broadcasters’ needs in mind. And the well-thought-out setup for cable placement and flow is to be expected from racks being designed by a cable maker. Denis showed me the ultra-slim truck rack, which has the option of being made from aluminum. All the rack frames include the company’s Quick Mount System for cable placement, allowing a cable to be attached anywhere a user wants. For more, check out a short 
I just watched a demo at the 
Sunday is always the exception to the rule of my typical NAB experience. For the past 20 plus years, I spend Monday through Thursday running from appointment to appointment spread throughout the massive Las Vegas Convention Center that makes the convention –to me- more like a marathon than an industry gathering. But Sunday is different –particularly Sunday morning.
Space in 2GHz band is becoming tight, but 
