- Calrec Audio: Outdoor broadcasting (OB) giant MIRA Mobile Television, the largest mobile-facilities provider in the western U.S., has incorporated a Calrec Sigma audio console into its newest remote truck, which went into service earlier this year. The 64 dual-fader console controls the audio in MIRA’s 53-foot-long, HD expando truck, the fourth truck in MIRA’s fleet to be equipped with a Calrec console. The new truck, the M11HD, is a powerful vehicle with a proven rapid-deployment design that will focus on covering regional and national sporting events in the Western U.S. and Canada. The Sigma audio desk with Bluefin™, which includes 5.1 surround sound capability, will allow MIRA to have an expanded number of audio embedders and de-embedders with 28 channels of EVS. Sigma also gives MIRA the flexibility to expand beyond these specifications as needed. Due to the console’s density, MIRA can support a much larger, complicated mix that includes 5.1 in a relatively small footprint, which is especially important in the OB environment where space is at a premium. Systems integrator Bennett Systems added the Sigma console to MIRA’s M11HD truck. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was the inaugural client, and CBC’s cornerstone property, “Hockey Night in Canada,” was the truck’s first event. Since that time, M11HD has covered NBA, MLS, and college basketball for ESPN, as well as college basketball for Versus and MLS for Comcast SportsNet California. Sigma with Bluefin provides 320 channel processing paths, enabling the console to handle up to 52x full 5.1 surround channels. This capacity is further enhanced by an identical buss structure to Calrec’s larger Alpha console, including 20 auxiliaries and 48 tracks. The system provides a significant amount of delay to cope with sync problems, such as those resulting from mixed-format HD/SD production. Bluefin also provides 496 mono elements of up to 2.73 seconds of audio delay, which can be inserted at various places in the signal paths.
- Sisvel Technology has announced a technical partnership with Antik Technology for the development of hardware supporting Sisvel Technology’s 3D Tile Format. The first of Antik’s 3D Tile Format-enabled devices — the Juice 3D Extreme HD 3DTV IP/DVB set-top box — will be shown at Electronic Asia at the Sisvel Technology booth (5F-F02). Juice 3D Extreme is a high-end hybrid DVB/IPTV set-top box (STB) with powerful processing for an optimal TV, web, and gaming experience. Juice 3D has been developed to provide state-of-the-art delivery of 3DTV, with a 3D Electronic Programme Guide user interface and high-quality 3D video rendering. With its support for the 3D Tile Format, Juice 3D Extreme offers to the market a product that constitutes a highly effective receiving platform for those broadcasters and IPTV operators looking for cost-effective, backward-compatible expansion of 3D services, without requiring additional bandwidth for dedicated 3D channels. The 3D Tile Format provides better quality images for 3D content compared to the existing frame-compatible formats, and maintains backward-compatibility, allowing viewers not equipped for 3D to view the transmission as 2D images. The reconstructed right and left images maintain their original spatial and temporal resolution, giving viewers of both versions the full benefit of the original picture, and the transmission of both 2D and 3D can be achieved without the need for increased bandwidth. All these remarkable advantages are brought by the 3D Tile Format in a convenient package that is very easy to implement in any H.264 compatible platform without significant impact on pre-existing architectures.
- VITEC Multimedia will be showcasing their new Optibase products at GEOINT 2011 at booth #1128. The new Optibase MGW Micro Premium is the ideal low latency, small form factor video encoding solution optimized for mission critical ingestion and dissemination of Full Motion Video (FMV) with AES encryption and optional metadata information supporting multiple encoding channels. The Optibase MGWx100 is a multi-channel platform for encoding video from base-band video sources offering pristine video quality per bit rate with optional AES encryption built-in. The blade based system offers the best price performance in the industry with advanced features such as swappable components; advanced redundancy, cluster management, parallel encoding, and many more. This is a TRUE carrier grade system providing a host and switch for a combined multi-channel output through one interface while a second streaming interface is available for additional streaming options. The Optibase EZ TV System is an integrated, end-to-end Full Motion Video (FMV) solution for archiving, managing, and streaming of live and stored video and audio sources. EZ TV offers an advanced player portal that allows web based playback with Mosaic views without an intrusive installation making it easy to deploy over a large and small network. EZ TV is the most widely deployed enterprise level IPTV system in the DoD with installations at major broadcasters, all levels of government agencies, educational, and corporate institutions, large and small. More company product information at https://www.optibase.com.
