ISE 2015 Q&A: Evertz’s Horner discusses evolution of AV division

Evertz AV, a division of Evertz focused exclusively on professional audio/video, returned to Hall 10 of the Amsterdam RAI at this year’s Integrated Systems Europe. Whereas last year’s booth — the division’s first — demonstrated how the company’s broadcast technologies could serve the AV marketplace, this year’s booth told a different story.

SVG caught up with Jamie Horner, director of system solutions for Evertz AV, to discuss how the division has fared and the development of products geared specifically toward AV.

How has the past year gone for Evertz AV?
We, as a company, have sort of run into AV applications because we’re a big player in the broadcast space and there’s always been some hybrid projects that have sort of fit our solutions. But, two years ago, I [started] focusing directly at the pro-AV space, meaning that, instead of just selling broadcast equipment to the market, we actually started to develop products targeted to that space: match their workflows, their environments, and their connector types.

That’s really where we started: trying to leverage our core technologies but make them meaningful solutions. Our big markets that we focus on now are higher education, government, corporate, houses of worship. … A lot of those solutions are being fitted into those spaces, like custom development for those types of applications.

When it comes to building on Evertz’s broadcasting core to build these AV technologies, what does that entail?
Think of it like we have core technologies that we develop. One of our big value-adds to the broadcast space has been our ability to route video and audio and distribute video and audio, so that core capability we basically augmented for the pro-AV space. It’s a matter of taking developed core componentry and putting the right form factors and connectors to make it relevant to the AV market.

What AV-specific technology do you have on display at ISE 2015?
We have our MMA-10G, which is our network-based AV-distribution solution. This allows for HDMI, SDI, DVI, analog, analog audio all to be captured and routed via the 10-gig video network. We can capture and record from that platform; we can create multiwindow video walls in that platform; we can add compression to that platform if you want to deliver that content externally. [For example, to deliver to] iPads and iPhones, we have an encoding element that allows source materials to be converted into an IP-based network [for] over-the-top delivery to iPads, so it’s really quite cool.

And we have the vScribe, which is our capture-and-record platform used for recording lectures, simulations, training; it’s a pretty well-featured product with the ability to capture multiple inputs simultaneously and to categorise and add metadata information to those recordings, have them all locked in time. You can deliver that to file-based output, or you could send it to iPad post-simulation or -lecture.

Obviously, Evertz is a huge player in sports broadcast and production. Do you see Evertz AV’s playing in the sports space at all?
On the sports side, the touchpoints are going to be probably in the higher-education space — within the venues. Professional sports at the arena level — that’s probably going to be our touchpoint into the sports world because the broadcast division obviously is taking most of that space up; they’ve got that pretty well covered. But I would say it’s probably a blend somewhere in the arena [or] stadium location.