October 2018 NEWS & VIEWS 11
IBC2018 sets direction for broadcast and media industry
BY JOSEPHINE TAN
AMSTERDAM – IBC continues to be the place where industry players and professionals meet to discuss the future of media , technology and entertainment . This year , the annual trade event saw the attendance of more than 55,000 visitors from all around the world walking through the halls of the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre in Amsterdam , The Netherlands , from September 13-18 .
Despite competition arising from over-the-top ( OTT ) service providers such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video , as well as technology giants like Facebook and Google , who are vigorously extending their footprint into the media industry , this is an “ exciting period of time that calls for innovation ”, commented David Cohen , vice-president of marketing , Grass Valley .
Cohen said : “ The shift in consumers ’ consumption habits has already resulted in media companies increasing their OTT spending . Hence , it is important to focus on innovations in this challenging time in the industry . Vendors will also need to have the capabilities to drive innovations forward .”
In a move designed to place customers at the centre of its innovation and product development , Grass Valley announced the debut of its new Core Technology initiative — an agile , collective approach to research and design . Embracing the “ lean engineering ” philosophy , Grass Valley said that the initiative will set the direction for its product portfolio , and take a “ build once , integrate to many ” approach in areas such as video processing , IP connectivity , cloud technologies and software-defined solutions .
The Core Technology initiative has already been applied to multiple Grass Valley products , including iTX , GV Flex and ICE . The company further revealed that the initiative will be extended to more solutions across its portfolio in the coming months .
Another company that has been focusing on IP innovation is Embrionix , which unveiled its all- IP emSFP microservice platform . This latest addition to the company ’ s software-defined gateways is capable of processing up to two 4K / Ultra HD ( UHD ) SMPTE ST 2110 / 2022-7 signals , and offers various processing microservices including frame sync , up / down / cross-converter , downscaler , colour correction , audio shuffling , video / audio / metadata timing adjustment
More than 55,000 visitors from all over the world attended IBC2018 , which took place from September 13-18 at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre in Amsterdam , The Netherlands .
Andreas Hilmer , director , marketing and communications , Lawo : “ Media companies today have a vision of installing future-proof solutions , which , of course , have to be IP-equipped .”
TVT ' s Jason Ho , vice-president , sales , Asia , and Mark Beard , senior vicepresident , commercial , highlighted that the company has been tasked by UK broadcaster ITV to provide a content management platform for its local and international markets .
and all-IP quad split , among other functions .
Embrionix also debuted its miniaturised emFUSION-6 UHD-IP standalone gateway , which is designed to interconnect multiple re- motely located devices over IP . The emFUSION-6 is software-defined , and can be deployed for remote broadcast production scenarios .
For Lawo , the company premiered its vm _ udx virtual module
David Cohen , vice-president of marketing , Grass Valley : “ It is important to focus on innovations in this challenging time in the industry . Vendors will also need to have the capabilities to drive innovations forward .”
From Riedel Communications are Christian Bockskopf ( left ), head of marketing and communications , and Joe Commare , marketing and sales manager for North America , who are ready to speak with visitors on how Riedel ’ s communication solutions can help streamline their operation workflows .
( VM ) for the V __ matrix ecosystem . The solution features four independent paths of format conversion between SD , HD and 4K / UHD for IP and SDI signals , in addition to providing audio embedding / de-embedding , frame sync , and RGB colour correction functionality .
Andreas Hilmer , director , marketing and communications , Lawo , explained that the vm _ udx is fundamentally designed with IP networking in mind , and the solution supports both ST 2022-6 and ST 2110-20 IP video , as well as ST 2110-30 / - 31 / AES67 and Ravenna IP audio streams .
“ Going IP is no longer a question . We have been doing more and more consulting works on IP , and understand that media companies today have a vision of installing future-proof solutions which , of course , have to be IPequipped ,” he added .
Making its European debut for GatesAir are two Intraplex IP network solutions , IPConnect and IP Link 200A . IPConnect is an IP networking gateway that employs a combination of packet protection schemes , network / time diversity and packet-level forward error correction to address the issue of data transport and packet loss across complex networks .
As for IP Link 200A , it is an AES67-compliant codec that marries audio encoding and decoding with optional builtin GPS for synchronised singlefrequency networking operations .
The GatesAir Intraplex IP Link product family also includes LiveLook software for analysing and monitoring all streams that are transported over an IP network , and generating reports and graphs to illustrate real-time and historical performance .
At the Riedel Communications booth , the company exhibited the 1200 series SmartPanel RSP- 1232HL . The SmartPanel features
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