NAB Perspectives: NewTek hails “overwhelming” response to expanded 3Play sports family

New features for the 3Play 4800, a price drop for the 3Play 425, and a swathe of new integrations through the company’s Developer Network were among the highlights of a busy NAB Show for NewTek. Chief marketing officer Carter Holland reflected on another busy week on the Las Vegas showfloor – and the more general shift in favour of “integrated production”.

What was the main story of the show as regards NewTek?

NewTek had two major announcements at NAB this year. First we announced an expanded 3Play family of integrated sports solutions. Whereas traditional replay servers mimic linear, tape-like workflows, we’ve designed our 3Play products to dramatically reduce the need for specialized products and individual operators. Our flagship 3Play 4800 gets major new feature enhancements including extensive replay and review capabilities, comprehensive media publishing, cross-platform command and control, automation and open integration, to name just a few. 3Play 4800 is an 8 camera input, 4U rack mountable device priced at £30,999. We also introduced a new model 3Play 440 which has the same software capabilities as the 3Play 4800 but in a 4 input, 2U rack mountable form factor for £20,995. In addition, we announced a major price drop for our 3Play 425 model starting at £7,995. We believe this is a historically low price providing network-quality slow motion and instant replay at a price point that was unthinkable a few short years ago. Plus we have what we think is the most generous upgrade path for existing customers. For example, the new enhanced features for the 4800 are free for existing customers.

Our second major announcement involved our rapidly growing NewTek Developer Network which featured 22 new products announced at NAB designed specifically to integrate seamlessly with TriCaster and/or 3Play. Our ecosystem has grown tremendously in a few short years with almost 60 products now available from 3rd parties. While all are listed on our website, SVG readers might be particularly interested in VizRT and 11 other sports-related graphics workflows, shared storage from four companies including EditShare, ProMAX, SNS and Vitec, as well as telestration capabilities available from FingerWorks, among many others.

What was the overall reaction to your latest developments at the show?

The reaction to our announcements has been overwhelming. Customers are very excited about the feature-packed capabilities of 3Play and the price structure, which we think is revolutionary. There is simply nothing else on the market that can touch it in terms of price/performance leadership. Customers are also excited about the new workflows available through the Developer Network which expands choice, capability [and] ease-of-use while maintaining unbeatable price/performance for TriCaster.

What are the specific elements that make NAB so important to your annual calendar?

NAB remains critically important for us because it is the largest gathering of industry influencers in our market every year. Like most companies, we’re able to meet with not only existing customers and partners in one spot, but it is also a great way to generate new prospective clients, which is why we come back every year and put such great effort into every detail of our booth presentation. It is also a chance for us to gather with our reseller network, which is a critical component of our business and success.

Aside from the NewTek stand… what else caught your eye at NAB 2014?

We continue to see a trend towards integrated production, where a number of companies introduced products that are beginning to combine or consolidate a handful of capabilities into singular offerings. One thing that hasn’t changed is the “time equals money” equation, where production professionals are constantly looking to accomplish a greater number of tasks in smaller amounts of time. We see no sign of this trend slowing down and believe that future NAB Show attendees will continue to see this theme rise to the top for the foreseeable future.