digiANALYSIS, BIZ + BITZ
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UWB Will Definitely BE!—According to ABI Research, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is expected to provide mobile telephone operators with a forecasted $300 billion in extra revenue over the next five years. Major operators such as Sprint, Verizon, and British Telecom (BT) will increasingly deploy IMS across their networks in a quickening tempo starting this year. Some firms—notably Verizon and BT—are facilitating this process by offering an open IMS interface allowing third-party developers easy access, as a way of ensuring a flow of new applications. This means faster testing and deployment of services, which will be critical to their success. One impediment to IMS’s success in the past has been the difficulty of proving the business case for it. IMS supports multiple services, and it takes several of them to make a valid business case. To use the hackneyed phrase, there has been a paradigm shift in operators’ strategic thinking. The major remaining challenge for operators is to integrate IMS without seriously disrupting existing services. IMS Core Networks: A Dynamic Service-Based Architecture provides a comprehensive look at the IMS activities in wireline and wireless access networks and offers insight into how operators are using IMS, and its role in future network migration—New York, New York
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In the realm of digiBITZ—
…Citing the FCC‘s rules are far too broad, and way too narrow, a number of law suits have been filed to negate the new federal rules regarding indie programmer rights on cable TV systems—the law states indie programmers can lease time on cable systems, with cable operators with large capacity required to reserver 15 percent of their channels for such programming—suit themes range from a violation of the free speech rights of cable, the acquisition of private property without compensation (a 5th Amendment violation) and other challenges…According to the Financial Times‘ Gartner research analysis report, the number 10 spot during Q4 for handset sales goes to—Apple—the report indicates Apple shipped almost 1.3 billion phones during 2007 and they made this position during the first year as a manufacturer of mobile phones…June of 2009 is the month when the next metallic installment, Transformers II, will wrack and roll it’s way onto the big screen, with an Optimus Prime in a seriously rotten role… Autobots and more, so mark you calendars… Five Emmy nominations have been received by HBO within the Sports Emmy Awards category—strangely enough, Inside the NFL received five nominations and that sports program with a 31-year record of success has just been cancelled—go figure!… Wii gamers, take note… one of the most anticipated games of 2008 for your system will debut on April 27th—yep, Mark Kart Wii from Nintendo will be ready for your cash donations at your favorite game retailer—within there are 16 new and 16 classic courses from Mario Kart games that have traversed your game systems previously and you may compete against as many as 11 other drivers from around the globe within 10 battle arenas—fully compatible with Nintendo WiFi connection for that all-important broadband hookup… If you’re traveling or conducting business in India, leave your Blackberry at home—the Indian government has turned down an application from Tata Teleservices to offer Blackberry services in that country—India’s powers-that-be have the right to intercept communications of the electronic kind if they feel such is warranted, and as Research In Motion (RIM) uses a data protection algorithm, such conversations are not accessible by Indian law enforcement agencies—those services who currently offer Blackberry services in India have been told to ensure the government has access to, and the right to intercept, emails—if they don’t do such, their licenses will certainly be null and void…
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Up To It’s NEC In IPTV—Some $500 million in sales is predicted by NEC, as the company digs in to launch a full-scale IPTV business. End-to-end video delivery systems will be offered to communication carriers around the globe, with 2010 projected as the year when the one-half billion mark is met. There are three strategies involved… first, middleware from Cascade Ltd. for network-based digital video recording and interactive video services; IPTV solution delivery via NEC products such as STBs, net equipment, the aforementioned middleware and systems for service and control; the April release of the company’s NC7500-VD VoD server, which will become the core system. Content-security functionality as well as carrier-grade reliability is promised by NEC.
digiCONTENT, CREATION + DELIVERY
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A Clean Slate For NAB—Broadcast Pix will be at Booth SU10605 at NAB 08 will be showing HD versions of an expanded Slate switcher family. Their file-based architecture streamlines live production workflow by completely integrating their included switcher, CG, clip stores, still stores and monitoring, and seamlessly networking them with content from edit bays. Each of the three new Slate HD models includes: a switcher with up to six keyers and DVEs, multi-view monitoring, a Harris Inscriber CG, and a clip store. The switchers’ hybrid I/O supports: 1080i, 720p, SD, DVI and VGA, plus analog output in composite, Y/C and component. It can add HD and SD analog inputs as well as 1080p output. Both 16:9 and 4:3 content can be mixed while preserving the native aspect ratio of each element—Burlington, Massachusetts
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Movies Direct to You Directly from DirecTV—Coming to your theater in your living room near you in the second half of this year—DirecTV On Demand. This satTV provider is currently testing a version of on-demand movies and TV service. Using a combination of DVR broadband connections in a Sky Active look-a-like service, DirecTV‘s satellites will automatically transmit a limited number of popular movie titles to customers’ digital video recorders. There, they will be stored for viewers to order whenever they wish to view them. You will also be able to order other titles by streaming them from the web via a high-speed Internet connection on the DirecTV set-top box.
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FOR-A For-U—FOR-A Corporation of America will announce several new products at NAB this year. Included among them is the Media Concierge content management system, the DNE-2 Noise Eraser, and FRC-7000 HD frame rate converter with increased audio support. FOR-A will unveil the first two MediaConcierge products being marketed in North America—the MBP-100SX baseband converter and MXF file conversion software. The DNE-2 incorporates image processing with motion compensation technology that is used to remove only the noise-filled signals, without harming the quality of the original video. The FRC-7000 HD Frame Rate Converter has a new audio option card, the FRC-70DA16, which supports an increased number of channels (16) for digital audio input and output. The company’s booth at NAB 08 is located at #SU5220
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Field + Studio Shooter—Hitachi Kokusai Electric will be prepped for questions at Booth C5018 at NAB 08 and the firm will be demo’ing the performance and features additions to the SK-HD1000. This is Hitachi‘s newest HDTV studio and field production camera. Squeezing the most from its digital processing expertise, Hitachi has upgraded the performance of its SK-HD1000 camera to an outstanding 60dB HDTV Signal to Noise Ratio at F10.0 and a real-world resolution of 1100 horizontal TV lines.
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Rugged ENG System Debuts—1 Beyond, Inc. has now made available their 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex Rugged video editing system. This unit is designed specifically for live Electronic News Gathering (ENG) broadcast trucks converting to tapeless High Definition. The new rack mount system is ideally suited to meet the unique needs of TV Stations working remotely with the new tapeless HD camera formats such as Infinity JPEG 2000, DVCPRO 50,
DVCPRO HD, P2, VariCam, XDCAM EX and AVC-Intra. The system can also be configured for direct-to-disk capture and other on-location uses, such as film production trucks and military video units. The system will be showcased for the first time at NAB 2008 (Las Vegas Convention center, April 14th to 17th) at the 1 Beyond booth (SL12509). With eight full core processors, the The 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex Rugged includes a dual redundant power supply with hot swappable power modules for easy maintenance. For software and hardware maintenance, the system is available with a spare parts kit including modular disks and power supply modules plus a USB Image drive with replacement system and applications serialized images for each system purchased. The system hardware includes: Dual Intel Xeon Quad core processors with a 12MB cache, equivalent to eight full core processors at up to 1600MHz FSB, 4 GBs of memory and a high performance dual port video card with 512MBs of memory. The standard storage consists of 2 removable 500GB SATA2 drives with a separate SATA2 controller, all internal, built into the system. The 1 Beyond HD OctoFlex Rugged is initially shipping with Grass Valley Edius Broadcast SP. The system is also certified for hardware and software configurations including Matrox AXIO, Adobe Creative Suite 3, Avid Xpress, Avid Media Composer, Blackmagic, AJA and other combinations of software, compression and capture hardware. The system is also available with a full complement of HD storage supporting RAID 5 and 6, enabling direct-to-disk video capture from SD to uncompressed HD including 2K 4:4:4 formats.—Somerville, Massachusetts
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Harris Hunkerin’ Down For NAB Demos—In its NAB Booth (N2502), Harris is going to unveil the next step in its ONE initiative for broadcasters—demonstrating a range of interoperable workflows, integrated technologies and innovative solutions to enable broadcasters to seamlessly move content and information between, and within, workflows. Harris will also introduce the latest additions to its 3 Gb/s product portfolio. The company will roll out the complete Harris NewsForce HD/SD newsroom solution. Built upon advanced Harris NEXIO shared storage server architecture, NewsForce is a comprehensive, high-definition/standard-definition (HD/SD) news environment that provides file-based newsroom workflow from field editing to delivery on air. The company will demonstrate innovative ways broadcasters can extend their offerings to advertisers and derive revenue using new Harris Digital Signage solutions that feature an extended range of InfoCaster products and services that can be implemented and scaled to provide advanced creation, management, scheduling, distribution, tracking and reporting capabilities throughout the entire digital signage delivery chain. Also debuting will be the world’s first Mobile Pedestrian Handheld (MPH) ready digital exciter. MPH in-band mobile DTV is the ATSC-compatible mobile TV solution jointly developed by LG/Zenith Corporation and Harris Corporation. This platform allows local TV stations to deliver digital, ATSC-compatible content to portable media players, automobile-based TV equipment, GPS devices, laptop computers and mobile phones.
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News Busting Development—OmniBus Systems will be previewing at NAB2008 their iTX NEWS.This is a powerful nexgen, multi-media news solution based on OmniBus iTX. iTX NEWS provides an extremely speedy, flexible and responsive workflow for today’s rapidly evolving, multi-format news environment. iTX NEWS has multi-format capabilities, allowing users to easily ingest and edit together SD and HD sources and combine them in the same playlist with non-broadcast material such as security footage and user-generated content—there are also real-time format conversion and rendering of effects. The iTX architecture streamlines the output of multiple versions of the same playlist for SD, HD, Internet streaming, mobileTV and other platforms, with automatic transcoding and distribution of content. iTX NEWS includes comprehensive media acquisition, asset tracking and logging tools, powerful browse capabilities and rapid Windows Media encoding for news streaming. Content can be acquired from a wide variety of sources—AVID, Final Cut Pro, live ingest, digital news delivery services and viewer-generated sources – and any mixture of formats can be combined in the same playlist. Frame-accurate proxy streaming is available to all users via the OmniBus SmartClient. iTX NEWS includes an optional, integrated, advanced 3D graphics package; it can also control many of the industry-standard graphics devices, allowing both graphics and video elements to be controlled from within a single playlist.
iTX NEWS also includes iTX Edit, a purpose-designed, multi-format, editing solution tailored for news and sports apps, with the ability to take edits to air without prior rendering—iTX does this in real-time, with graphics, audio and video effects, stills, captions and voiceovers. EDLs can also be exported to Final Cut Pro or AVID for craft editing if required—Denver, Colorado
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Learn About IPTV Through Osmosys—Osmosys S.A. develops open standards, Java-based, interactive digital television solutions. The company is launching its new IPTV Solution during the IPTV World Forum at Olympia, London, from March 12-14th. The video services delivery platform for standard definition (SD) or high definition (HD) enables the deployment of IPTV and multimedia services over broadband networks. This is a perfect time for applications in Java, as it is the mandatory standard method for implementing interactive menus on Blu-ray discs, which will be the new standard. To achieve the IPTV Solution, the Osmosys’ products used are: EGG 3D graphics technology, open standards middleware based on GEM technology, and a number of server modules, many of them designed to be revenue generating. The solution is controlled by a front-end system for easy administration, which all run on standard Linux servers— Geneva, Switzerland
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Rackin’ ‘Em Up—During NAB 08, Stantron is going to be exhibiting their entire line of products that include an array of rack mountable shelf options for its successful E-Rack and Presentation Racks. The new offering features a range of sturdy clamp shelves and cantilevered shelves designed for broadcast and pro-A/V installations. Stantron’s clamp shelves can be used to rack mount products that were not originally designed to be rack-mounted. There are two styles, one designed to support up to 25 lbs and one that supports 50 lbs of weight. Both boast installation-friendly features which include adjustable top and bottom clamping hardware, low compression set foam padding to ensure a secure grip and pre-installed studs that eliminate fumbling with tiny hardware pieces. Stantron’s Aluminum and Steel Filler panels are also making their NAB2008 debut—Mayville, Wisconsin
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TV One Releases 4—Upward and onward…TV One has a new trick up their sleeve: The 1T-MX-3344 Matrix Routing Switcher, a high-bandwidth unit that provides four inputs and outputs of Component Video plus Stereo Audio. The unit accommodates YPbPr HD Video or YUV (Y,R-Y,B-Y) SD Video signals, plus Analog Stereo Audio. In addition, the 1T-MX-3344 allows any of the four inputs to be routed to a single output, multiple outputs or all outputs. This is a capability unique to matrix routing switchers. The video bandwidth in excess of 300MHz ensures that this switcher provides an output identical to the source signals. Resolutions from 480i through 1080p are supported—Kent, United Kingdom
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Virtz Spertz—During NAB 08, Vizrt, at booth SL4805, is going to conduct a press conference on Monday, April 14th, at 5:45pm at that location. You’ll learn about Vizrt’s Viz Engine 3 renderer, which was designed with built-in interactivity to maximize the ability of a news anchor to drive a live story from his fingertips. This unique graphic renderer is now at the heart of most interactive broadcasts, whether they are election, weather, finance or sports coverage. Vizrt will introduce partner company Perceptive Pixel, developers of the Multi-Touch Broadcast Wall used by Fox News for the U.S. primary elections. Vizrt and Perceptive Pixel will jointly display new capabilities for combining live graphics and video using an instantaneous touchscreen. Vizrt will demonstrate how that same interactivity has been brought to the web. The company will present the first commercial website using the Viz Multi Platform Suite. Vizrt will also introduce its clip and still store; the latest version of its media asset management system; and unveil updates to its mapping software. Other product highlights to be discussed include Viz Reporter, which enables journalists to ingest pictures and video from mobile phones directly into an asset management system; and Viz Video Hub, a plug-and-play asset management system that allows users to access video clips, stills, graphics and audio clips from a standard PC—Bergen, Norway
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Would You Like Some TiVo with Your YouTube?—What you see is what you will get—only bigger. That is, YouTube videos will be available to be viewed via TiVo Series 3 DVRs later this year. Yep, from the smaller computer screen to the larger TV. TiVo’s aim is to bridge the gap between web video and TV, all the while offering maximum content. TiVo isn’t the first to take this path, as Apple launched the functionality last year in its Apple TV box. However, there are more TiVo users than there are Apple TV users. You can sign up for a season pass to record a program, and/or subscribe to video clips and have the content downloaded to your hard drives. The YouTube clips, however, will be streamed by broadband Internet connection. What you’ll need to get this show on the road is the most current TiVo hardware, a Series 3 or HD set-top box—and a broadband connection. Better make sure you’ve got the current equipment. According to reports, of the 1.7 million who purchased their box directly from TiVo, only about 800,000 have the necessary broadband connection—Alviso, California and San Mateo, California
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Copyright 2006—2008 digiGO! | High Sierra Media Group (HSMG) & SatNews Publishers. All rights reserved.
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Would You Like Some TiVo with Your YouTube?—What you see is what you will get—only bigger. That is, YouTube videos will be available to be viewed via TiVo Series 3 DVRs later this year. Yep, from the smaller computer screen to the larger TV. TiVo’s aim is to bridge the gap between web video and TV, all the while offering maximum content. TiVo isn’t the first to take this path, as Apple launched the functionality last year in its Apple TV box. However, there are more TiVo users than there are Apple TV users. You can sign up for a season pass to record a program, and/or subscribe to video clips and have the content downloaded to your hard drives. The YouTube clips, however, will be streamed by broadband Internet connection. What you’ll need to get this show on the road is the most current TiVo hardware, a Series 3 or HD set-top box—and a broadband connection. Better make sure you’ve got the current equipment. According to reports, of the 1.7 million who purchased their box directly from TiVo, only about 800,000 have the necessary broadband connection—Alviso, California and San Mateo, California
