IBC 2014 Perspectives: Eric DuFossé, Senior Segment Manager – Live, Grass Valley

As this year’s edition of IBC drew to a close, Grass Valley senior segment manager, live, Eric DuFossé – who was also one of the first confirmed speakers for this October’s SVG Europe/IMG Media-organised Tour & Conference event – reflected on an eye-catching 4K camera demo and the overall outlook for UHD.

Of the multiple new developments on show from Grass Valley at IBC, which would you choose to highlight?

Following on from the technical demo of a compact 4K camera at NAB, we are here showing a final version [LDX 4K]. In conjunction with this, attendees have had the opportunity to see footage [on the EBU booth] from the MotoGP in Italy, shot with two Grass Valley 4K production cameras, switcher and replay system. Interest in the cameras has been very strong indeed and we look forward to being able to ship by the end of this year.

In what ways is your strategy towards IP continuing to evolve?

We have really outlined this clearly at IBC, and it is to support open standards and also to allow for our customers to generate their own IP infrastructures. The bottom line is we don’t want to box in our customers. So we have shown two aspects here: an IP gateway for our existing NVision routers, and a software-defined network control application layer that allows us to interface with broadcast infrastructure control [set-ups].

What will be the crucial aspects for customers going forward?

Managing the movement of data packets in the IP network and matching the broadcast requirements in terms of latency. In this regard, our SDN (software defined networks) based solution – which was demonstrated throughout IBC 2014 – is going to be a very important part of the strategy.