The Thomson press conference is usually one of the more polished PCs of the show. This year was a huge exception, but only for technical glitches.
The teleprompter (no hints at who’s it was) failed several times during the presentations. Unfortunately, the presenters didn’t seem able to carry forth without the prompter. One would think these pros could wing such things, but not so this time.
One memorable quote from Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Thomson’s Broadcast & Professional Solutions within the Systems Division, was that this show represents the last “analog NAB show”. Next year, we’re all digital.
While the company had lots of sales announcements, its the new products that everyone is looking for.
The first one to talk about is the DMC 1000/20, a high performance camcorder for ENG and EFP applications. The new camcorder provides expanded recording capacity over the REV PRO 35 enabled DMC 1000/10 by using the new Thomson Grass Valley REV PRO XP and ER media. With the DMC 1000/20 joining the DMC 1000/10, the DMC family has expanded to two camcorder models.
The Infinity camcorder's companion deck, the Infinity Digital Media Recorder (DMR) also uses REV PRO XP and ER media to playback content shot with the DMC.
The DMC 1000/20 includes the same robust feature set as the DMC 1000/10, including three 2/3-inch progressive 1920x1080 native HD Xensium CMOS imagers for acquisition in HD and SD, at 50Hz and 59.94Hz. The camcorder also supports solid-state recording via CompactFlash. It also supports the choice of MPEG-2 and JPEG 2000 compression profiles for HD and SD, including legacy DV compression for SD.
The REV PRO 35 disk can transfer DV25 material at almost ten times real time. The REV PRO ER disk (for extended recording) has a capacity of more than 90 minutes of 75 Mb/s HD.
The second product to mention is the MediaFUSE, a content re-purposing and multi-distribution system. MediaFUSE is an end-to-end suite of automated tools featuring a software architecture that is capable of simultaneously producing web, mobile, and IPTV broadcast materials in real time for both “live” and “on-demand” applications.
MediaFUSE can increase the amount of content a broadcaster can make available for internet and mobile distribution by as much as five times over a traditional manual processes
It enables users to re-format existing or live content to a number of digital platforms in a matter of minutes; complete with metadata, URL links, and advertising categorization. In addition, the MediaFUSE system can provide live streaming of over-the-air shows, complete with alternate commercial breaks while fully realizing the potential and profitability of re-purposing and syndicating localized content.
One press conference down, 225 to go. (Just kidding.)
Watch a video on the Thomson Grass Valley's MediaFUSE on Broadcast Engineering TV.
Related article: Thomson Grass Valley Ignites MediaFUSE for multiplatform production.
Update: The Thomson Grass Valley MediaFUSE won a Pick Hit award!
