NAB Awards Wrap-up, Part 1: FUJINON, Ericsson, PESA, Fluendo, and Tedial
New FUJINON 4K UHD Lenses Win TV Technology NAB Best of Show Award
The Optical Devices Division of FUJIFILM North America received a TV Technology Best of Show Award during the 2015 NAB Show for its new 4K Ultra HD Series of lenses. Both the UA80x9 field lens and UA22x8 portable zoom lens have optical performance compatible with 4K 2/3-inch broadcast cameras, and were introduced at NAB earlier this month in Las Vegas.
“We’re thrilled to win this award for the first in our series of 4K zooms for 2/3-inch broadcast cameras,” said Thom Calabro, director of Marketing and Product Development for the Optical Division of FUJIFILM. “TV Technology is one of the most respected publications in the broadcast industry, and it means a lot to be recognized by them for these new lenses that we were so excited to unveil at NAB. These Ultra HD lenses were developed in response to the market demand for 4K optics that would work with 2/3-inch broadcast cameras. We’re looking forward to seeing them in use for a variety of sports and entertainment productions.”
The UA80x9 4K field lens has an 80x zoom and optical image stabilization, making it ideal for coverage of large-scale events. The lens covers focal lengths ranging from 9mm in wide angle to 720mm in telephoto. The FUJINON UA22x8 4K zoom lens features a compact and lightweight design, a 22× zoom ratio and a focal length from 8mm in wide angle to 176mm in telephoto. The UA22x8 excels in capturing a broad range of applications, including live sports, program production and news reporting.
Both of the lenses were designed using the latest proprietary optical simulation software. The UA80x9 and UA22x8 lenses offer exceptional 4K optical performance in the center of the image through to the corners of the frame. Fujifilm’s “High Transmittance Electron Beam Coating” (HT-EBC) is applied to the lenses for enhanced transmission, contrast, dynamic range, and color reproduction. The FUJINON lenses can be linked with other systems, such as a virtual studio system for combining CG images with live action.
NewBay Media’s Best of Show Awards are judged by a panel of engineers and industry experts on the criteria of innovation, feature set, cost efficiency and performance in serving the industry. Both the FUJINON UA22X8 and UA80X9 lenses will be available by August of this year.
Ericsson Launch of Cloud Video Enabler Wins NAB Best of Show Award
Ericsson’s Video Storage and Processing Platform, an all-software infrastructure, has been honored by NewBay Media with its ‘Best of Show: TV Technology’ award. The awards recognize a select group of industry-leading products exhibited this year’s NAB Show.
Ove Anebygd, Vice President and Head of Solution Area Media, Ericsson, says: “TV Consumers are already demanding access-anywhere services and infinite content choice, and will soon become frustrated with the fragmenting industry approach to delivering on-demand services. As a result, TV service providers are under increasing pressure to quickly and efficiently deploy complex time and place shifted TV services.
“Our latest platform establishes the current industry benchmarks for performance, flexibility, and scale. Specifically optimized for media and suitable for time-shifted services such as cloud-based DVR, it has scale-out capabilities which have been proven to support over 150 petabytes of video storage across demanding customer sites worldwide. This award is testament to our market leading position in the media space. Our unique, flexible and disruptive approach to reducing costs and simplifying processes is enabling our customers to delight consumers in their TV experiences, and to deliver business results though increased loyalty, new subscribers and revenues,” Anebygd added.
Ericsson’s Media Vision 2020 research predicts that by the year 2020, time spent watching on-demand and time-shifted content will have reached 50:50 parity with linear and live TV. TV service providers therefore must ensure that they can address accelerating consumer demand through scalable and resilient infrastructures, while still being able to deliver unparalleled performance that sustains high recording and playout concurrency, especially in all-new adaptive bitrate delivery architectures.
The Video Storage and Processing Platform powers Ericsson’s Cloud DVR solution, which was recently launched at NAB Show 2015 following Ericsson’s acquisition of Fabrix Systems. It offers a unique and tested infrastructure, which ensures that existing television services can be seamlessly enhanced or replaced with advanced private cloud-based services. This all-software platform leverages and transforms the video-specific performance of large arrays of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers.
New PESA Blade System Wins Best of Show Award
PESA, a designer and manufacturer of streaming solutions as well as professional audio and video distribution products, received NewBay Media’s Best of Show Award, presented by TV Technology magazine, for its new PESA Blade System (PBS) last week at the 2015 NAB Show. The first two cards for the proprietary frame are based on the PESA Xstream C22 compact streaming appliance, and provide dual-channel H.264 encoding and decoding.
Housed in a 2 RU chassis, the power efficient PBS holds up to 10 cards and is controlled through Cattrax, PESA’s Windows-based system control software. Each PBS chassis can be tailored for any operation, includes all standard network connectivity standards, and is available with redundant power.
Both PBS cards – the C22-PBS-T for MPEG transport streams and the C22-PBS for RTSP and RTMP streams – can be configured as a two-port video encoder, two-port decoder, or include one of each. Two external audio sources can be synchronized to either or both video streams during an event. Plus, the C22s feature HDMI I/O ports for encoding HDMI sources or local HDMI monitoring. PESA is also developing additional proprietary cards to handle signal conversion and scaling.
“We appreciate the recognition from the TV Technology team,” said Chris Thomas, PESA president. “The new PESA Blade System is an important component in our integrated solution, because it provides world-class encoding and decoding, along with seamless routing between baseband and IP-based sources. The result is a true hybrid infrastructure for broadcasters and command and control facilities that is controlled through one interface and supports streaming, 4K, HD, and legacy SD signal sources.”
NewBay Media’s Best of Show Awards are judged by a panel of engineers and industry experts on the criteria of innovation, feature set, cost efficiency, and performance in serving the industry. Only a small number of products were selected to receive a Best of Show Award from among hundreds of nominated new products.
“Recognition with an award at the NAB Show from NewBay Media’s Broadcast & Video Group is a strong vote of confidence and admiration from our leading industry publications,” said Eric Trabb, vice president and group publisher, NewBay Media Broadcast & Video Group.
PESA also introduced two new C22 encoding/decoding cards at the 2015 NAB Show that are compliant with the openGear standard for terminal equipment. Similar to the PBS cards, each C22 card offers dual-channel encoding or decoding, allowing up to 20 bi-directional channels in the 2 RU openGear chassis. PESA’s encoding and decoding streaming technologies join more than 300 openGear solutions from more than 50 vendors that support the open architecture platform.
Fluendo Recognized With Best of SPROCKIT Award
Fluendo was presented with the first annual “Best of SPROCKIT” award as a favorite startup at the 2015 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show. At NAB Show, SPROCKIT showcased 30 emerging companies that were hand-selected by industry experts because of their potential to disrupt the media and entertainment industry. SPROCKIT gives startups the opportunity to meet on equal ground with executives at leading media and entertainment companies to discuss new technology or creative solutions to solving the industry’s biggest challenges.
The first annual “Best of SPROCKIT” awards recognize five exceptional SPROCKIT companies for their outstanding products and solutions, as voted by NAB Show attendees. During NAB Show, Fluendo was one of 30 SPROCKIT startups presenting their company’s products and solutions in a five minute pitch session, followed by a brief Q&A open to all NAB Show attendees. Attendees were encouraged to cast their vote for the most outstanding SPROCKIT company via an online and SMS voting platform powered by 2014 SPROCKIT startup, ExciteM. Fluendo was among the five startups with the highest number of votes and was honored at a SPROCKIT VIP Reception and Awards Ceremony in Las Vegas.
“We are thrilled to be recognized as an outstanding company with exceptional products by SPROCKIT and NAB Show attendees,” said Muriel Moscardini, CEO, Fluendo. “As a growing company introducing our new products, LongoMatch and Tagtics, along with our existing ONEPLAY multimedia suite, it is terrific to get positive feedback and validation from our industry peers. We want to thank Harry Glazer and his wonderful SPROCKIT team, together with the NAB for this award and the opportunity to participate alongside these game-changing entrepreneurs.”
Gordon Smith, president and CEO, NAB, presented the awards during the industry convention, alongside Harry Glazer, CEO and founder of SPROCKIT, and SPROCKIT corporate members Roger Keating, senior vice president of digital media at Hearst Television, and Kevin Cuddihy, president of local media at Univision
Tedial Named IABM Game Changer
Tedial, an independent MAM technology solutions specialist, has received the IABM’s Game Changer Award in the System Automation and Control category for its Tedial Evolution at NAB 2015. The awards were presented to companies whose solutions or products represent outstanding achievement in nine categories. Winners were announced at a reception on Tuesday, April 14 in the IABM Member Lounge in the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Entries were judged by a panel of 30 industry experts who identified processes, systems, products, services or developments that demonstrate superb innovation and offer real benefits for end users.
“IABM is dedicated to rewarding innovation and creativity in companies of all sizes. By opening up the awards for entry this year, we have seen an incredibly high standard, and this year’s winners have all distinguished themselves in the significant contributions they have made to the industry as a whole,” says Peter White, Chief Executive, IABM.
Tedial Evolution unveiled at NAB, provides the broadcast and media industry with the next generation in MAM and business driven media workflow. Evolution™ provides an end-to-end business media platform that marries media preparation and logistics into a complete supply chain enabling customers to cost effectively increase their media throughput whilst media consumption evolves at its current unprecedented speed. Evolution significantly enhances Tedial’s Media IT platform and its media workflow efficiency to a whole new level. Advanced high performance search and indexing tools are included as standard and provide new services to easily surf and explore archive. Evolution is designed to reinforce a collaborative working environment to drive workflow for linear, VOD and OTT services.”
“We are honored to receive the prestigious Game Changer Award and thank the IABM for its recognition,” remarked Esther Mesas, Tedial’s Chief Sales & Marketing Officer. “It is very exciting and deeply rewarding to be one of nine organizations whose solutions are acknowledged to have the potential to “change the game”. Tedial Evolution provides a completely new user experience designed to accelerate both manual and automated media workflows and enable broadcasters and content owners to take real advantage of file-based workflows, cloud computing and other emerging technologies with minimum risk and maximum benefits.”
All nine winners will now be put forward for the prestigious Peter Wayne Award, with the final result announced at the IABM’s Annual International Conference in December 2015.