New Broadcast Equipment Launched at IBC 2011

Well, IBC 2011 is almost over. Here’s some of the new notable products launched at IBC 2011 that we liked:

Panasonic:

The AV-HS400 vision mixer has been a widely accepted small form compact vision mixer. The AV-HS410 is the successor with some nice new additions including a clip video store and 3D capability. It comes as standard with 9 inputs and has option boards to increase this to 13 inputs. Look out for some interesting new options boards that may be released next year.

Blackmagic Design:

At NAB 2011, Blackmagic Design released their SmartView Duo monitors – two 8" 3U rackmount monitors. At IBC 2011, Blackmagic launched the Smartview HD monitor – a 17" full HD resolution 3G HD SDI rackmount monitor for an unbelievably low price. Almost too low to mention – £565. As much as we asked the nice Blackmagic man to let us unscrew it from the display wall at IBC to test the weight, he wouldn’t let us –  but this thing looks light – and it’s very thin. And as you’d expect from Blackmagic – it’s very aesthetically pleasing. If you rackmount it above or below the SmartDuo monitor, you’ll notice the frames around the screens marry up perfectly.

Blackmagic have also introduced some new rugged field mini converters – basically the same as they’re previous (and well loved) mini converters but built for a bit more rough and tumble in the field – which makes sense given that’s often where you’ll find those Blackmagic Design mini converters.

Other interesting new equipment from Blackmagic Design included the ATEM Studio Converter. Remember the ATEM Camera Converter that Blackmagic announced at NAB 2011, rather than having two of these for each of your cameras – one at the camera and one at ‘control’ area, the ATEM Studio Converter allows you to connect 4 ATEM Camera Converters – all in a 1U frame. They also have a loop function if you have more than 4 cameras.

Datavideo

Other new kit launched at IBC 2011 that caught our eye included some new hot head cameras from Datavideo (that look suspiciously like Sony’s BRC dome range of hot heads – but without the price tag) and a low cost waveform/vectorscope.

Atomos

Atomos were proudly showing their great Ninja and Samurai tapeless recorders plus the new Connect converter units – HDMI to HD SDI and HD SDI to HMDI. Not groundbreaking technology but they’re nice little units – that also include a test pattern signal and tone generator.

Haivision

We saw a good demo of Haivision’s Viper portable video streaming unit – think Digital Rapid’s TouchStream on steroids. It can stream two HD signals simultaneously – great for a camera plus a PowerPoint presentation or synchronous slides. Using Haivision’s patented InStream player, your client/the viewer can rearrange and resize the two incoming streams. Nice feature.

For-A / NewTek

For-A gave a good demonstration of their new VRCAM2 sensor less virtual studio system. NewTek’s 450 and 850 series looked equally good and potentially more cost effective as NewTek provide an almost full studio end to end solution.

TVU Networks

The TVUpack from TVU Networks is a powerful bit of kit for live, location based video streaming – using 3G bonded sim cards. Turn it on and you’re streaming. Need to tweak a setting, just use your iPhone or iPod.

AJA

Aja launched the io XT at IBC 2011. Basically an upgrade of the Io Express with Thunderbolt connectivity.

Remember most of the new equipment launched at IBC 2011 won’t start shipping till Q4 – the end of the year. Just enough time to tweak those budgets and work out how to pay for it all!

NAB 2011 Product Announcements – Blackmagic Design

NAB 2011 officially kicked off yesterday. News reports of product announcements from the broadcast industries big (and small) players came flooding in all day.

Here’s our pick of some of Blackmagic Design’s new product launches and announcements at NAB:

Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Studio

A compact, 1U file-based HDD featuring uncompressed HD recording (to two solid state drives) and playback. 10-bit SD/HD video via SDI or HDMI connections. It offers full VTR functionality with familiar jog and shuttle control and it even has a built in LCD screen for monitoring. It records to QuickTime .mov files which are compatible with AVID and FCP. At $999, the Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Studio could be a real game changer in the tapeless and file-based world.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hyperdeckstudio/

Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Shuttle

A cut down version of the HyperDeck Studio, the HyperDeck Shuttle is designed for on-camera recording to optimise your camera’s uncompressed output. No LCD screen but at $345, it’s a bargain.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hyperdeckshuttle

Blackmagic ATEM Camera Converter

Convert your camera SDI signal into optical fibre to extend SDI’s limited distance up to 28 miles. It also includes talkback, an external microphone input, a program return feed, a tally and a built in battery power source. Very impressive and at $595, Blackmagic Design have yet again produced a broadcast quality product at an unbelievable and unbeatable price. Although remember, you’ll need two (one at the camera, one at the control room).

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/atemcameraconverter/

Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio

A professional vision mixer with 6 SDI inputs, 4 HDMI inputs, multi-view monitoring and realtime H.264 broadcast quality encoding all housed in a 1U frame? Surely not. Blackmagic Design have extended their ATEM production switcher range to include the ATEM Television Studio.

You may have to see it to believe it, but the specs look pretty impressive. As standard, it comes with a software control panel which you can run on Windows or Mac OS, but physical panels can be purchased as well. Starting at $995, this could give the likes of NewTek with their Tricaster portable studio range, a run for their money.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/atemtelevisionstudio/

Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 3D

Yes that’s the infamous Thunderbolt DisplayPort you can see there. It’s here. Finally. Fairly inevitable, that Blackmagic Design would announce this new product at NAB. Matrox and AJA also have SDI I/O boxes with Thunderbolt connectivity too. More on their release in another blog.

The Blackmagic Design UltraStudio 3D is a compact, portable capture and playback device for SD, HD, 2K and 3D and it’s all built on Thunderbolt™ technology – that’s 10Gbps. Will webcasting and video streaming software providers such as Telestream, with their Wirecast streaming software, support it? Blackmagic Design have priced the UltraStudio 3D at their familiar $995 price point.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/ultrastudio3d/