Grass Valley hits IBC with new ownership and new energy
Grass Valley makes its IBC debut under new ownership but much of the management and personnel remains the same, giving the company a familiar face. It also has a renewed commitment to customers. “The most noticeable aspect will be associated with the way Grass Valley is now partnering with our customers, focusing on delivering solutions and services that better help their businesses,” says Jeff Rosica, executive vice president, Grass Valley.
“The booth will expose a set of integrated solutions across the major market segments we serve, each focused on solving key problems and opportunities that our customers are commonly facing today,” he continues. “The other aspect is the integration of our product portfolio, focusing on IT and software, and leveraging our expertise in broadcast workflows and infrastructure.”
The industry has undergone tremendous changes in recent years as products like the iPad, iPhone and Android phones, broadband deployments, and now 3D give new ways to reach viewer eyeballs. Rosica says that multi-platform content delivery is a real challenge with high operational costs and limited revenue flow at this stage. Meeting that challenge is something Grass is looking to do.
“Some products solve not only the multiple format conversion issues, but also address automated segmentation, and packaging of the content to dramatically reduce OPEX and optimize revenues with automated ad or content replacement,” he explains.
But the challenge is more than just getting content out to consumers. It is being able to easily and cleanly set up workflows that don’t collapse under the weight of digital transport.
“Today the industry can deliver very powerful infrastructures which allow hundreds of users to share millions of assets across multiple locations,” he explains. “The biggest challenge today is to provide an application layer that enables this infrastructure with simple tools that optimize collaborative work. A modern workflow framework application serves this purpose.”
At IBC, Grass Valley will demonstrate powerful software applications that solve problems mentioned above with the “Rich Media Publishing” and streaming application, MediaFUSE. This gives each user the tools they need for each task, with seamless and stable interconnection across a broad network of devices, from Grass Valley and other vendors supporting standard open architectures.
“We’ll also introduce STRATUS in Europe, a game-changing MEDIA Workflow Application Framework,” adds Rosica. “We will also demonstrate an affordable alternative for live production, complete with replay system and vision mixer. “
Also look for enhancements to 3G transmission with a system that eliminates the triax/fiber cable challenge of outside broadcasts. Grass Valley 3G Triax and 3G Fiber now combine without converters in the new high-performance 3G Transmission camera system introduced at NAB. 3G Transmission is set to transform the outside broadcast business by allowing production companies to use fibre or triax, whichever is convenient for them, without compromising quality or functionality.
But wait, there’s more…
The show will also provide European customers with their first chance to get a close-up look at Grass Valley’s new high-quality, fully integrated multiviewer capability in the family of Trinix NXT multiformat digital video routing switchers.
Introduced at NAB, the new option supports infrastructures up to 3 Gb/s, while providing up to eight SDI multiviewer monitor outputs per card—including the ability to monitor audio for each source. The Trinix Multiviewer is ideally suited to monitoring within all types of broadcast control rooms, live production and distribution facilities, and mobile trucks.
The new Trinix NXT Multiviewer is easily installed into a new Trinix NXT router or field-integrated into existing Grass Valley Trinix frames.
Each multiviewer board includes 32 scalars with all inputs on each board supporting all video standards (from 480i to 1080p). By using the card’s cascade capability, the system can also support up to 128 images on a single output without rescaling the cascaded signals.
Users can also set up a single image to span multiple monitors, creating stunning video cubes.
With less than 75 watts typical power consumption for eight outputs, the Trinix NXT Multiviewer features two MADI inputs for discrete AES audio monitoring in addition to embedded audio monitoring capabilities from any source routed to the multiviewer. It also has Sophisticated graphics, tally (TSL and Image Video), and UMD support, signal monitoring, status, and alarming functions