CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Sept. 3, 2019 – Cobalt Digital today announced it has signed a master distributor agreement with Plura MEA for sales and support in the Middle East and Africa region. Plura MEA will provide sales and support for Cobalt’s extensive product line of video and audio conversion, processing, and monitoring standalone modules and card-based solutions for openGear® frames.

“This is a major step in the continued expansion of our efforts to provide Cobalt Digital product sales and support across the world,” said Chris Shaw, executive vice president of sales and marketing, Cobalt Digital. “Plura MEA is an ideal company to promote the Cobalt brand in the Middle Eastern region, and we are pleased to work with them to expand our global footprint in this growing market.”

Based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Plura MEA is a subsidiary of Plura Broadcast, Inc., which also has offices in Germany, South Korea, and the United States. Plura is a leading international manufacturer of high-performance video monitors, sync and timing, and calibration solutions for professional media markets.

“This is a tremendous addition to the Plura MEA portfolio of products, backed up with more than 30 years of market experience,” said Hassan Salamah, business development manager, Plura MEA. “Our new alliance with Cobalt presents substantial opportunities for both companies to offer extensive and interconnected solutions to a wide spectrum of market segments.”

“As a big advocate of long-term strategic alliances, I’m convinced this agreement will lead to collaborative prosperity and market development,” added Ray Kalo, president and CEO of Plura. “Our work with Cobalt will provide strength and cohesion in our international business philosophy.”

Cobalt’s product line, including a number of new 4K and HDR card-based workflow solutions, will be displayed next week in Stand 10.B44 at IBC2019 in Amsterdam.

About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning edge devices that help live video production and master control clients transition to IP, 4K, HDR, the cloud, and beyond. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative and proud member of SMPTE, Cobalt also offers a best-of-breed interoperability platform that simplifies technological adoption. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. Learn more at www.cobaltdigital.com. 

NEW YORK—SportsNet New York (SNY), the official television home of the New York Mets and New York Jets, covers the New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania regions and is also available nationally on cable packages. We recently moved from midtown Manhattan to a new studio in the 4 World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. As part of the move, we included 90 new and existing Plura monitors ranging from 9 inches to 55 inches.

We began using Plura almost nine years ago. The experience since has been nothing short of bright, with years on end without an issue. Our stock of 46-inch and 55-inch multiviewers, 32-inch program and preview displays, and 17-inch and 19-inch QC monitors must match exactly over time and the Plura displays have proven themselves project after project.

SNY has installed Plura monitors throughout their new facility at 4 World Trade Center.

CALIBRATION CAPABILITIES
The Plura monitors have proven as the standard for our facility. Edit rooms, graphic rooms and control rooms are fully outfitted to meet the demanding broadcast needs.

Plura Monitoring & Timing solutions are used extensively throughout the facility and control rooms to provide consistent SMPTE-calibrated colorimetry and intelligent MTDoE (Multi-Time Display over Ethernet) technology. MTDoE, an exclusive studio-timer solution, was developed and designed by Plura to deliver a reliable, accurate and feature-rich system.

Selection of the Plura displays and MTDoE was not difficult as Plura products offered the performance we were looking for and the product support history confirmed by other installations in the marketplace. For example, we selected the operator-friendly Plura SPT Studio Production Timer because it can be configured at any workspace, offers swift implementation using an Ethernet infrastructure, is PoE capable and can sync to NTP as a reference source.

Plura offers the PSC-400/500 free remote control application, which is designed to control a large number of Plura monitors in multiple locations via a TCP/IP interface. It can create and edit a system control map for all Plura monitors in the facility that are connected to our network.

TEST & MEASUREMENT
I’ve seen other companies add a variety of test tools to their monitors, but the resulting purchases proved to be low quality and didn’t offer many advantages. In general, waveform monitors ensure proper exposure (no clipping), black level and gamma. Many video attributes can be corrected in post applications, but getting the camera exposure correct goes a long way in reducing the time spent correcting the images later.

Plura monitors feature excellent rasterization, ensuring very usable waveforms, while also offering the ability to present SDI data in a textual format. This helps QC ensure the connected camera is operating properly. The monitors also provide audio bar graph displays and can monitor any of the 16 embedded audio signals through an earpiece.

Plura has every type of monitor you need from an economy application to the highest end. The price points and feature sets run the gamut from top to bottom. You can always find a fit for Plura in your facility.

Alex Blanding is vice president of engineering for SportsNet New York. He can be contacted atablanding@sny.tv.

For more information, please visit www.plura.tvor call 602-944-1044.

BETHLEHEM, PA.—Today’s technologies, including 2K, 4K, HD and other formats, require fairly complex monitoring to ensure standards compliance and subjective acceptance by distribution networks. With monitors from Plura Broadcast, which offers monitors for both field and post-production, I have found a relatively new “standard of quality.”

SEP-224 monitor features loudness monitoring, waveform, vector and audio bar graph displays.INSIDE & OUT
Every production team wants the flexibility of using the same family of monitors in the field as well as in post to ensure image consistency. When a tool like the Plura SFP-224-3G-24-inch comes along, it simplifies everyone’s job. I can’t say enough of Plura’s ability to reproduce images consistently across various display platforms; including Plura 9-inch and 17-inch monitors in the field and 24-inch in the edit suite.

We use either the 9-inch or 17-inch monitor on every field shoot for our weekly magazine show “Focus.” WLVT-TV’s “Focus” generally offers two or three local segments wrapped with a studio sequence. The Plura monitors are used to view both playback and camera video; single or flypack shoots. This enables correlation of the image quality to that seen on the 24-inch monitor in the edit suites.

When the videographer can rely on a monitor to set up lighting and cameras in the field, and both the production/editing and engineering teams agree on the value of the same monitoring product, the director of engineering’s job becomes fun. There is nothing more detrimental to a team than a broadcast operations staff arguing subjective aspects of content.

The fact that Plura’s user interface allows morphing the monitor from “production mode” to “engineering mode” with a single button press is phenomenal. The Plura engineering display includes CALM certificate loudness monitoring, waveform, vector, audio bar graph displays and the ability to monitor the 16 embedded audio signals, making it one of the most useful monitors that I have ever used. (For the record, I have literally seen and used hundreds.) With physical interfaces to RGB, YPbPr, Composite, SDI, fiber (via SFP) HDMI and so on, Plura monitors are at home in any broadcast television or production environment.

TEST & MEASUREMENT FEATURES
I’ve seen many companies add a variety of test displays with low-quality to monitors, resulting in the user purchasing features that aren’t of much use. In general, today’s waveform monitor is used mainly to ensure proper exposure, black level, and gamma. Many video attributes can be corrected in post, however, getting the camera exposure correct goes a long way in reducing the amount of time spent correcting the images later.

Plura monitors have a great quality of rasterization, ensuring very usable waveforms, while also offering the ability to present SDI data in a textual format. This can help with things like start of active video, which is important image data that many operators don’t concern themselves with as much as things like whether or not the camera is operating properly.

The first day I showed a Plura monitor to my production team, they literally would not give it back. They had been waiting for something lightweight and battery- operated, offering features of the most expensive monitors. Unsurpassed quality, simple operation and flexibility; that’s all they’ve ever asked for, and with Plura it’s finally in the house.

Dave Guerrero is chief operating officer for WLVT-TV. A member of SMPTE, AES, SBE and IEEE, Guerrero brings over thirty years of broadcast experience as the leader of the engineering team at WLVTTV, PBS39. He can be reached atDavidG@wlvt.org.

For more information, visitwww.plura.tvor call 602-944-1044.