Leitch Revamps Modular Line

With its ever-expanding product line, Leitch shared a plethora of announcements regarding new and enhanced products for NAB2003.

Margaret Craig, president and CEO of Leitch, said that the company's goal is to provide products that make sense in the soft economy.

"This is a very rough business environment [regardless] of the business you're in," she said.

Touching on five themes that tie the Leitch product line together--user interfaces, advanced software control, interoperability, multistandard functionality and technical vision--Craig said that the company is sharpening its focus on products that are practical, affordable and easy to use.

Leitch has become one of the industry powerhouses in the server segment, with increasing deployments for news applications.

"We're really starting to become a player in news," Craig said.

The company has enhancements to its VRnet server line, including an ASI interface and MPEG transport stream processing. VRnet now supports multiple formats from 4 Mbps-long GOP to high-definition formats, and the product is compliant with MXF.

Leitch became quietly famous for its modular signal processing and distribution products that fit into the company's 6800 rackmount chassis.

"This is an important product line to us--it's our bread and butter," Craig said.
Craig announced the company's new 6800+ rackmount chassis, which holds up to 20 input/output and processing cards and is backward-compatible with the older 6800 line.

In addition to higher performance, the new chassis adds control capability, including an optional Ethernet control interface.

Saying that "there is still a need for simple video recording," Craig introduced the NEO VR digital video recorder module that fits into the Leitch NEO rackmount chassis. Up to 12 NEO VR recorders can be mounted in a single chassis, and the cards work with a variety of control interfaces, including existing VTR control panels.

Leitch also announced its new Panacea modular routing switcher and enhancements to its popular Integrator line of routers.
Copyright 2003 NAB