Harris Targets New-Era Revenues

04.15.2009

Harris, once thought of as just a transmission company, is coming to this year’s NAB Show with tools to smooth and unify the operation as well as to expand into new areas like mobile DTV, the Web and digital signage.

“What’s missing from the out-of-home ad market is a method to monetize the asset,” said Brian Cabeceiras, vice president for strategic marketing and technology at Harris Broadcast, describing the state of digital signage. There hasn’t been a sophisticated way to distribute data, sell an ad and verify and invoice it, he said.

The message is that digital signage and the potentially massive out-of-home ad market isn’t just for retail chains and transportation hubs—broadcasters, too, need to compete for that revenue. For that, the Harris InfoCaster product family merges broadcast-quality graphics with flexible media management and play-out solutions, giving broadcasters an end-to-end solution to distribute video and data services to displays in virtually any location.

Harris digital signage solutions also support multiplatform delivery services, including the ability for broadcasters to equip advertisements with mobile response capability.

In the mobile DTV realm, Harris is demonstrating a deliverable end-to-end set of solutions using its MPH transmission standard, including NetVX video networking systems, multiplexers and the software-definable Apex M2X exciter on through to new efficient Maxiva transmitters.

With the basic delivery chain for mobile DTV now in place, broadcasters will need to nail down the business model. For that, Harris is offering a “business-in-a-rack” approach with branding, ad sales, servers and more so customers can put up the mobile channels quickly.

Also at the NAB Show, Harris is demonstrating Dynacast, which provides a two-screen interactive application for viewers and lets broadcasters sync Web content with programming.

The Harris master control demonstration will feature a Harris Nexio AMP providing broadcast video feeds to the IconMaster master control switcher (v3.0 is HD/SD ready and in control over Ethernet), Centrio multi-image processor, Platinum routing switcher and ADC automation platform. The five systems work seamlessly together, greatly simplifying workflow in multichannel situations and for automated and manual control.

Harris will be at booth N2502.



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