MONTREAL—Five weeks ago Grass Valley announced that it had acquired Snell Advanced Media and now it is ready to show some of the fruits of that merger to attendees at this year’s NAB Show.

[Belden/Grass Valley Acquires Snell Advanced Media]

Visitors to the Grass Valley booth on the Las Vegas Convention Center floor will see offerings from both GV and SAM portfolios organized by key application areas: live production, news, content delivery and networking. There will also be a dedicated camera stage and a “Discovery Zone,” which will feature self-guided virtual tours of technology topics.

GV is also housing a hospitality booth, SL1805, where customers can meet with sales people, product managers and executives.

The 2018 NAB Show will run from April 7-12. Grass Valley will be located at booth SL1806.

ST. LOUIS—A week after it announced its acquisition of Snell Advanced Media, Belden revealed that it paid a litte more than $94 million for the company, according to an SEC filing.

The purchase price is $75.8 million, plus assumed debt of $18.4 million, totaling $94.2 million. Belden cautioned the SEC that it cannot yet report the estimated fair value of the assets because the accounting process is ongoing.

[Belden/Grass Valley Acquires Snell Advanced Media] 

“The acquisition includes a potential earn-out for which we have not yet estimated a fair value,” Belden told the SEC. “This acquisition was funded with cash on hand. We are in the preliminary phase of the purchase accounting process, including obtaining third party valuations of certain tangible and intangible assets acquired.

“As such, the purchase accounting process is incomplete and we cannot provide the required disclosures of the estimated fair value of the assets and liabilities acquired for this business combination.”

(This article has been updated to correct the purchase amount) 

ST. LOUIS—Belden has completed the acquisition of Snell Advanced Media (SAM). Terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but SAM will be incorporated into Grass Valley.

The company will be led by Tim Shoulders with the headquarters based in Montreal. Grass Valley said many of SAM's product brands will be retained, although full details are yet to be determined.

The company said the announcement enables them to improve their offering with "the most comprehensive, innovative selection of products and services and increases our ability to provide assured interoperability. It extends our ability of offer in region support to the global broadcast community."

The formal unveiling of the deal is expected to take place at NAB in April. Grass Valley said the two companies will combine in a single booth in Las Vegas.

SAM's president Eric Cooney will stay on as an advisor to the senior leadership team and will be part of the integration planning team.

Cooney said: "The team at SAM has worked hard over the past several years to deliver world class products that have met or exceeded the expectations and needs of our target customers. We believe that becoming part of the Grass Valley family within Belden allows us to give our customers an even greater opportunity to continue growing with us. 

"With the backing of Belden, our company has the stability and resources that the industry demands to continue innovating and meet the competition head on."

Tim Shoulders, president, Grass Valley, added: "With this investment Belden again demonstrates our commitment to the broadcast industry. Adding SAM's employees and products to the Grass Valley family extends our global reach, makes us more agile, and provides even more domain expertise to enhance Grass Valley's industry-leading solutions.

"Our customers face competition and uncertainty like never before, this transaction will help them navigate the technology options available to them with fewer concerns around interoperability and deployment complexity, while providing them greater access to the innovators that are developing the solutions of tomorrow."

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Snell Advanced Media is hiring Sandra White as its new vice president of sales for North America. She is slated to begin in her new position as of Oct. 30.

White joins SAM from Tandberg Television and Ericsson.

“The incremental growth opportunity for SAM in the North American market is clear and compelling and I’m confident that Sandra’s addition will only accelerate our success in the region,” said Eric Cooney, SAM CEO.

NEW YORK—Snell Advanced Media is putting an emphasis on its multi-platform news production and playout products at the upcoming NAB Show New York, announcing it will demonstrate its Vibe news production system, Go! remote production editor, Kahuna production switcher and ICE channel-in-a-box in conjunction with the Morpheus UX GUI.

Vibe

The Vibe delivers news content to all media platforms. It is a fully scalable ecosystem for news production that provides total coverage from a single production team. It is able to integrate with the Go! production suite so news outlets can access and edit content from anywhere.

Go! is HTML-5 browser-based with edit anywhere capability that can get news out to social media and on-air quickly. Remote live media can be viewed and edited with locally shot content, including voice over and video and audio transitions.

ICE is SAM’s channel-in-a-box system, and Morpheus Automation will demonstrate the company’s ability to deliver video content to more platforms and devices. Morpheus features a new Morpheus UX HTML-5 browser-based graphic user interface that facilitates deployment of a customizable control and monitoring UI for playout applications. ICE is a software deployable system, also billed as ICE SDC. ICE SDC enables the deployment of a fully populated channel and can be deployed as a service either on premises, remotely deployed or AWS public cloud.

There will also be the Kahuna 9600 production switcher, which has an update slate of features to facilitate HDR production. Its new FormatFusion4 accommodates any mix of PQ, HLG and Slog3 HDR standards and SDR both in and out.

SAM will display all of these products at booth N637.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—In the effort to help make the transition to IP, Snell Advanced Media and Cisco have announced a new collaboration that will create an integrated IP networking system.

This new partnership will see SAM design-in Cisco technology with professional services as part of its IP systems, like integration of Cisco’s Fabric for Media platform. SAM will also include the Cisco Nexus 9000 series switchers and Data Centre Network Manager software-defined networking platform as part of its IP global go-to-market strategy.

SAM’s IP product portfolio includes baseband conversion to/from IP, standards conversion and signal processing, production switchers, live replay and multiviewers.

SAM demonstrated some of its IP solutions with Cisco integrated technology at IBC 2017.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—As the curtain rose on a recent production of the National Theatre Live’s performance of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” Snell Advanced Media was backstage helping provide the first HDR production. SAM’s Kahuna production switcher, outfitted with the latest version of the FormatFusion technology, helped bring HDR capabilities to all inputs and outputs and was deployed in Telegenic’s OB truck for the two-part live broadcast.

The Kahuna with FormatFusion4 technology provided the production team with both SDR and HDR capabilities, as well as use rec.709 and rec.2020 simultaneously. The entire production was delivered through the UHD switcher. The National Theatre had used SAM’s Kahuna switcher in the past, but this was the first time it was used for UHD/HDR purposes, per one of the broadcast’s technical producers.

The “Angels in America” broadcast, which starred Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Russell Tovey, Denise Gough and James McArdle, was shown live in more than 2,500 cinemas in 60 countries. The two-part production was shown in theaters on July 20 and July 27.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—The latest version of Snell Advanced Media’s FormatFusion software is now available and is bringing HDR capabilities to the Kahuna production switcher.

With the FormatFusion4 software, the Kahuna system now has HDR capabilities to all inputs and outputs. With the software, Kahuna can handle SDR and HDR for sports, news and entertainment productions. FormatFusion4 supports the Electrical Optical Transfer Functions for real-time control of Perceptual Quantizer; real-time control of Hybrid Log Gamma; and Sony S-Log3 profile. It also includes color space support for wide color gamut (BT709 and BT2020) in 1080i, 1080p and UHD.

SAM used the newly powered Kahuna production switchers during BT Sport and Telegenic’s 4K HDR broadcast of the UEFA Champions League Final.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Snell Advanced Media will be pulling up to IBC 2017 with a slate of products that demonstrate IP and remote production, UHD sports production workflows with HDR support, cloud-based playout, multi-format news production and automated monitoring and control.

Go!

SAM will showcase its cloud technology with demonstrations of live channel deployment on AWS through its ICE SDC workflow, which can spin up/down fully featured channels. For IP, SAM will have native IP multiviewers, processing systems, production and master control switchers featuring 25, 50 and 100GbE interfaces.

Remote production over IP capabilities from SAM will be highlighted by the Go! multi-platform editor, which consumers can use to view, carry out rough cut edits and finalization from any device in any location. Go! works with SAM’s Vibe multi-platform news production system for shared workflows to create content.

To demonstrate its UHD sports production workflows, SAM is bringing its Alchemist XS system for frame rate conversion of live events. The company will also show live production workflows that can use combinations of format and resolution.

Additional products that will be at the booth include media content monitoring and control systems like Media Biometrics, as well as its logo detection technology and schedule aware monitoring.

Special displays at the booth will include Timeline Television’s latest UHD2 IP, 4K and HDR OB truck and live graphics specialists RT Software, which will demonstrate its AR studio products.

SAM will be located at booth 9.A01 during IBC 2017.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Timeline Television’s new UHD2 IP 4K HDR OB truck will be pulling up to Snell Advanced Media’s booth at IBC 2017. The OB truck features a number of SAM’s IP-based products and its 4K/UHD replay system.

Installed in the UHD2 are two Kahuna IP production switchers, IP multiviewers, with SAM’s IP infrastructure technology serving as the backbone. SAM has also supplied the truck with its LiveTouch 4K/UHD replay and highlights system to be used for demonstrations at the show.

The Timeline truck is designed to support 32 Sony 4K cameras. The Kahunas enable SDR and HDR to be run simultaneously along with down converted HD outputs. With this set-up, SAM claims that production teams can work in VSF TR-03 to work video and audio as separate essence flows within an IP workflow.

The SAM booth is located at stand 9.A01 during IBC 2017, which takes place from Sept. 15-19 in Amsterdam.

NEUSS, GERMANY—A deal has been reached between Ikegami and SAM that will see Ikegami take over as a reseller partner for SAM.

SAM products that are included in the agreement are the IQMIX IP/SDI transceiver modules and SAM’s range of production switchers, including the Kahuna and Kula 1-3M/E range. The SAM gear will now be available for use with Ikegami’s UHK-430 4K camera.

The agreement covers the Americas, APAC, CIS, EMEA and most Asian countries.

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—In June, Snell Advanced Media (SAM) announcedthe appointment of former Tandberg Television President Eric Cooney as president and CEO of the company, succeeding Tim Thorsteinson who had lead the company for the past two years, managing its merger with Quantel. In advance of next month’s IBC Show, TV Technology Editor in Chief Tom Butts talked with Cooney about his expectations for SAM and the M&E industry in general.

TV Technology: What, based on your past experience in this industry, prepared you for this new position?

Eric Cooney: My past experience includes more than 25 years in the TMT (technology, media and telecommunications) sector, including 12 years creating more than $2 billion in enterprise value as CEO for two companies, Internap and Tandberg Television. In both cases, these companies built significant value through a focused investment in engineering R&D, which resulted a track-record of innovative, differentiated technology solutions. SAM already has a legacy of technological innovation and you should expect us to increasingly invest in focused engineering R&D to enable our customers to meet the market demands for the transition to IP, the adoption of 4K/8K/HDR technologies and the evolution to the Cloud/TV-as-a-Service model. 

Further, my experience with Tandberg Television in particular gave me exposure to the unique customer requirements in the Media & Entertainment sector. When your company’s solutions are deployed in the center of your customer’s revenue-generating engine for the delivery of live news, global sporting events and 24/7 broadcast content there is an expectation of ‘zero-tolerance’ for errors. Experience in this environment translates very well to my role with SAM and I’m excited by the opportunity to work in this high-intensity, dynamic environment. 

Finally, there are significant implications for a supplier to shift their model from CAPEX to OPEX, and for scenarios in which an OPEX delivery model provides operational and/or commercial benefits to the customer then this is a path you will see SAM pursue aggressively. My experience with Internap, as a Cloud/Hosting, recurring-revenue service provider affords me a clear understanding of these implications across the entire development, sales, delivery and support value-chain. I believe there will be an opportunity to positively differentiate SAM’s TV-as-a-Service capability for many solutions including: production, playout, automation, asset management, editing and finishing.

TVT: How do you differ from your predecessor?

EC:Possibly a better place to start is how I’m similar to Tim. We share a belief in strong and focused R&D investment to ensure the company is at the forefront of its markets.

Of course, Tim and I have different backgrounds and I feel that my professional experience in support of enterprise value creation spanning the TMT sector and including recurring-revenue, service provider business models is well suited to drive the next phase of profitable growth for SAM.

TVT: What impressed you most about SAM?

EC:One of the key reasons I joined SAM was because the company has some really exciting core technologies that are today, and will continue to be a sustainable basis of competitive differentiation. It’s clear to me, only a few weeks in, that we have some incredibly talented engineers and an amazing portfolio of products.

TVT: Where do you view SAM’s position in the industry right now? What are its biggest challenges?

EC: SAM is well placed in the industry with major innovations and differentiated offerings across our portfolio. Our most significant near-term growth opportunities are driven by gaining market share from our competitors. This is always challenging, but with increased focused investment in engineering R&D and robust operational execution we are confident in our ability to gain share.

TVT: Do you think SAM has overcome its reputation as a vendor with mostly “high end, expensive” products and technology?

EC:Ultimately, our pricing is set by the market. To the extent, we are able to come to market with compelling, differentiated offerings that solve real-world customer problems, we’ll continue to grow successfully. Hopefully, we will be known as a ‘high-end provider of high-value solutions.’

TVT: Do you believe the reorganization is complete or are there any loose ends that need to be resolved?

EC:Given the dynamic nature of the market in which we compete, I expect SAM will be similarly dynamic. This is not in terms of ‘reorganizations, but in terms of our rapid adoption and deployment of new technologies, commercial and delivery models. 

TVT: You’re returning to this industry after nearly a decade elsewhere. How have things change in the way it conducts business, relevant to other industries?

EC: For good reasons, the Media & Entertainment sector has not transitioned to IP, nor adopted Cloud/Hosting technologies as rapidly as other industry sectors. Obviously, that is changing now and, frankly, was a key part of my excitement to rejoin the industry at this point. 

TVT: What will SAM focus on at IBC?

EC:We’ll announce specifics shortly, but you should expect our announcement to align with the key industry drivers including: IP transition, 4K/8K/HDR adoption and the evolution to Cloud-based solutions. 

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Snell Advanced Media and Gearhouse Broadcast played their part in the championship game of UEFA’s European U21 Final, providing an uncompressed UHD remote production trial. The two companies delivered an IP system that replaced the traditional OB set up, which provided live camera signals from the Marshal Józef Pitsudski Stadium in Krakow, Poland, to BT Sport’s facility at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London for live edit and playout.

LiveTouch

The live UHD signals from five Sony HDC 4300 4K/HD cameras at the stadium were sent via a specially installed and commissioned pair of fully redundant 100GB Ethernet links. At the facility in London, a SAM LiveTouch server was used in a two in/two out UHD configuration to play UHD replays, packages and graphics.

“It is the first time that uncompressed UHD signals have been delivered over such a distance with ultra-low latency,” claimed Robert Szabó-Rowe, EVP and general manager, live production and infrastructure at SAM. “The production team didn’t see any perceived difference to sitting in an OB truck on location.”

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Former Tandberg Television President Eric Cooney will be taking over the reins at Snell Advanced Media, as the company has officially announced his appointment as its new president and CEO. Cooney will take over for Tim Thorsteinson who is stepping down for personal reasons, though he is expected to continue to be involved in an advisory capacity to the Board.

Eric Cooney

Cooney has more than 20 years of experience in the technology, media and telecommunications industry. During his time as CEO of Tandberg Television he led the merger with Ericsson Group. He also spent time as the CEO at IT services provider Internap Corp.

“We’d like to thank Tim for his important contribution to the success of Snell Advanced Media during his tenure as CEO,” said Chris Hurley, chief portfolio officer for LDC, which backs SAM. “Eric brings a wealth of industry experience from across the group’s core markets as well as senior leadership experience in some of the sector’s most successful firms. He is ideally placed to lead the team and further build on the business’ successes to date.”

SAM, headquartered in Newbury, England, delivers products for the media production ecosystem, including live production, news and sports editing, playout and delivery, modular infrastructure and image processing. 

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Television Broadcast Ltd. (TVB), Hong Kong’s largest broadcaster, is rolling out its first UHD outside broadcast vehicle and has turned to Snell Advanced Media to supply some of the infrastructure. Stocked in the UHD OB truck is SAM's’Kahuna multi-format live production switcher and IQ Modular infrastructure.

With these SAM systems, TVB can support complex productions, including HD and UHD. The Kahuna switcher can handle any combination of SD, HD, 1080p, 4K, IP and HDR via the FormatFusion3 and FormatFusion4 technology, which eliminates need for external conversion.

The TVB truck went live in April 2017 and in addition to the SAM gear includes UHD 4K HDR cameras from Ikegami and lenses from Fujinon.

The truck replaced the broadcaster’s previous SD truck and will be used to support a mix of HD and UHD broadcasts, including the coverage of international events.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Snell Advanced Media is in business with Moscow-based 24/7 TV news channel Life by providing its Kahuna 4800 production switcher with Maverick control surface.

Life’s newly acquired Kahuna 4800 offers 2-4M/Es, 2.5 DVE and up to 24 key layers on a fully populated system. It features the FormatFusion3 and FormatFusion4 for multi-format operations supporting SD, HD, 1080p, 4K, IP and HDR.

The Kahuna was installed and live on air within two days, according to SAM’s press release.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—SAM gear will be hitting the road in Italy as a number of its products have been selected to help build out NVP’s new 4K OB truck.

On board the truck will be SAM’s Kahuna 9600 switcher, which can manage multiformat productions and eliminates the need for external conversion. SAM’s Sirius 840 router has also been installed to support multiformat switching, allowing any combination of signal formats and processing.

The truck was designed by SAM in partnership with Video Progetti. With the truck, NVP is capable of producing SD, HD, UHD, SDR and HDR video, as well as utilize IP technology.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Snell Advanced Media has shipped its ICE channel-in-a-box south of the border, as Mexico’s Televisa Networks has acquired the platform. As part of the acquisition, Televisa has also added Morpheus automation, a Sirius 850 router, SAM’s Rollmap infrastructure management system and IQ Modular infrastructure with the goal of adding 37 channels of programming.

The ICE system offers a toolset to manage playout operations, including single channel, multi-channel, multi-region and multi-platform environments. Televisa integrated ICE with SAM’s Morpheus playout automation system for enterprise-scale use for national broadcasts, sports, network origination, central casting and business continuity.

The new playout system went live for Televisa in late 2016.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Broadcasting Center Europe, as the systems integrator for the RTL Group, has decided to go with SAM’s end-to-end IP infrastructure at RTL City, RTL Group’s new Luxembourg headquarters. The infrastructure is designed to consolidate all of the broadcaster’s operations in one location.

The SAM system supports 24/7 broadcasting for a range of channels, including RTL Télé Lëtzeburg, Chamber TV, RTL TVI, Club RTL, Plug TV, RTL 4, RTL 5, RTL 7, RTL 8, RTL Z, RTL 9 and AB Groupe movie channels.

SAM’s IP infrastructure demonstrates full SMPTE ST 2022-7 redundant hitless operation, with recovery from interruption to one IP link. It provides a clear on-air upgrade path from ST 2022-6 and VSF TR-04 to TR-03/ST 2110 with AES67 support. The infrastructure can also deliver 40GbE network technology and SDI-level performance and clean (COTS IP) switching, and was able to support x960 2022-6 video flows, x1103 AES67 audio flows using more than 1104 ports.

In addition, the SAM infrastructure provides user intuitive router control in SDI, IP or hybrid operation on both traditional software and hardware router panels. There is also interoperability with third-party control systems.

The SAM IP routing system is made up of SAM’s Kahuna IP production switchers, IQ-Edge IP processing systems, IP routing control systems and IP Multiviewers. The initial deployment is based around VSF TR-04 using SMPTE 2022-6/7 and AES67 redundant IP streams, with migration to VSF TR-03.

LAS VEGAS—Snell Advanced Media is continuing to grow and prosper as television continues to evolve on new technological fronts. Neil Maycock, executive vice president and general manager of the company’s Media Software Solutions division, announced the news at a Sun- day morning NAB Show press conference.

Neil Maycock

“We’re seeing record growth,” said Maycock. “In 2016 … we grew 20 percent in overall revenue. In a market that is close to being flat overall, according to statistics and reports … we think we’re really bucking the trend.”

Maycock also detailed the expansion of SAM’s product lineup. “We’ve had a lot of firsts,” he said, noting the introduction of more than 60 products in the past year.

In particular, Maycock observed the launch of VIBE, a news production system. “It is truly format-independent,” he said. “We’re looking to do great things in the news area.”

Other introductions include the Morpheus UX playout system, which allows customers to create their own user interfaces, and LiveTouch, a sports production and replay system.

SAM is also marketing new IP-based products, including a new MC switcher with 50 GbE interfaces.

SAM is not neglecting the SDI sector, rolling out new conversion products, routers and production switchers supporting 12 Gbps operation. Of particular interest is a converter that performs cross-conversion among all HDR formats.

Also announced Monday, SAM has agreed that its Digital Fact Book can be used to create a new industry-wide glossary by IABM. The result of 30 years of ongoing dedication to keeping the industry up to date with new technologies, standards and terminologies, the contents will form the backbone of the new IABM Glossary. The IABM Glossary is an online living resource, and will continue to build on the solid foundations of SAM’s Digital Fact Book, using IABM’s own technology experts to add definitions and explanations as they happen across the industry.

Copyright NAB 2017 

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Canadian broadcaster CHEK TV is boosting its ability to deliver news both on air and over the web with the addition of Snell Advanced Media’s Vibe platform.

Vibe is designed to capture feeds regardless of format or aspect ratio and incorporate it into a news package. The system provides a unified workflow that allows a single production team to handle inputs, produce and deliver content to air and social media platforms. The Vibe is also able to integrate with CHEK TV’s Octopus Newsroom system.

In addition, CHEK TV has brought in SAM’s Go! multiplatform editor for HTML5 editing and social media publishing. Go! allows for production staff to access Vibe content from any location using a browser.

CHEK TV is an independent broadcast station in Victoria, Vancouver Island, BC.

LAS VEGAS—About 18 months after the merged Snell and Quantel companies rebranded as Snell Advanced Media (SAM), the company is exhibiting at the 2017 NAB Show with its widest range of products ever. The merger of the two established vendors has resulted in a combined “whole” that is greater than the “parts” that had existed prior, according to David Tasker, vice president of systems and technology for the U.K.-based company.

The merger of the two companies had initially focused on sales teams and manufacturing, and subsequently design, engineering and R&D integration, said Tasker.

“We now have Snell technology across the whole product range, including the historic Quantel range,” he said, specifically noting Snell’s core IP technology, Media Biometrics, and baseband and image processing know-how.

Conversely, Quantel 4K expertise is now seen in what was historically a Snell playout environment, and Quantel’s HDR and color processing is now evident across a large product range.

One of the core aspects not seen at the surface level is the Momentum PAM and workflow orchestration tool. “We’ve woven Momentum right through the range as it relates to live production and playout,” he said. “It’s the underlying powerhouse.”

Tasker also noted that CEO Tim Thorsteinson and Russ Johnson, senior vice president, Americas, had done a lot to boost offerings for the North American broadcast agenda, and brought profitability and growth to the company.

Tasker says that the company’s core IP technology has been built-in across the live production range as IP is adopted in more situations, but the market—particularly the OB area—has a lot invested in legacy SDI infrastructures. Because of this SAM is rolling out 12G SDI across the range as well.

SAM LiveTouch 4K replay & highlights system At NAB the company will demonstrate its fast editing, replay and highlights production workflow, along with systems that combine immediate replay of live events with no-copy editing and post production.

“‘No-copy,’” editing is a bit different than a traditional ‘ingest then editing then publishing,’ workflow,” says Tasker. “With embedded Quantel editing and storage technology, it’s always been that you edit within frames of what you’ve captured, in the place you’ve captured it, and then publish from that point.”

Tasker says the benefits of this unique, robust file system allow production from one control surface with less moving of media and a single control point. “It’s more flexible and faster,” he said. SAM’s replay solution, LiveTouch, is an example.

SAM’s sports production offerings also allow users to publish highlights and replays straight to social media at the touch of a button. Tasker said customers in live sports and news are very interested in getting to social media quickly, as that drives viewers to the traditional broadcast.

MULTIDISPLAY MONITORING
One product category where SAM has greatly upped its game over the last year is multiviewers. Here, the company now has a presence in enterprise-level product for the first time. “We’re bringing out not only ‘catch-up,’ product, but also ‘leap-frog’ product as well,” Tasker said.

Shown at IBC and now delivering, SAM’s multiviewers span every niche in the market, including new 12G and IP multiviewers. Part of the offering on show will be its media content monitoring and control solutions based on SAM’s established Media Biometrics technology. Distributed intelligent logic engines across the workflow enable exception-based and schedule-aware monitoring, and the company says it can deliver very competitive production monitoring density and flexibility, along with full integration with master control systems and third-party integration.

“Multiviewers are huge for us at NAB,” said Tasker. “[Having an expanded range] is enabling us to win business as part of our end-to-end portfolio with fewer and fewer gaps.”

As for core infrastructure, SAM is showing its new IP products, which use 40, 25, 50 and 100 GigE interfaces; new 12G-SDI solutions are also on show. SAM will demonstrate its modular infrastructure and conversion capabilities, and highlight UHD to SD support for IP and SDI along with integrated SDI and IP routing control and flexible IP/SDI I/O for routing, switching, conversion, multiviewers and monitoring.

For 4K and HDR, SAM will launch HDR file-based conversion products, FormatFusion4 HDR conversion in its Kahuna production switcher line-up, and support for 4K and HDR conversion in its mid-range KudosPro and UHD1000 products.

For playout, a name from the wayback machine—Morpheus—is getting a radical new web-based user interface for multichannel playout control. Morpheus UX gives customers much greater adaptability so they can tailor channel views and focus on specific, needed functionality. ICE SDC, SAM’s pure software playout solution for virtualized IP playout, will also be demonstrated, along with a brand new 12G-SDI master control system with HD/1080p and 4K 12Gbps single link support.

SAM will be in booth SL1805.

LAS VEGAS—SAM will showcase a 4K live sports production workflow and versatile, multi-format news production systems at the 2017 NAB Show, as well as advances in IP and 12G-SDI products. With the ability to meet HD and UHD demands for any size production, SAM’s 4K live sports workflow enables very fast turnaround of editing, replays and highlights, and the ability to publish highlights and replays directly to social media.

LiveTouch 4K

SAM will also show its multi-format news solutions featuring integrated social media publishing workflows for every platform, and an open, flexible, collaborative environment that allows for easy integration with newsroom partners. Multi-format, multi-aspect ratio media management allows users to seamlessly mix aspects and file sizes from acquisition through delivery. .

SAM will show multiviewers for 12G and IP, as well as media content monitoring and control solutions based on its Media Biometrics. Distributed intelligent logic engines enable exception-based and schedule-aware monitoring, with third party, master control integration. There will also be new IP products with 40, 25, 50 and 100 GbE interfaces.

SAM will also showcase its ICE SDC software playout solution for virtualized IP playout; a 12G-SDI master control system with HD/1080p and 4K-12Gps single link-support; and a web-based user interface for its Morpheus UX multi-channel playout control that lets users tailor channel views.

The company has also added FormatFusion4 HDR conversion to its Kahuna production switchers, and 4K and HDR conversion to its mid-range KudosPro and UHD1000 products.

The 2017 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 24-27. SAM will be in boothSL1805. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—As part of its new Partner Engagement Program, Snell Advanced Media has launched the SAM Academy. This new knowledge platform will be aimed at channel partners, system integrators, resellers, VARs and distributors.

The SAM Academy delivers in-house classes at its U.K. headquarters as well as webinars, videos and training sessions. Topics that the Academy plans to cover include IP & virtualization, 4K live production and post production, sports and news, playout and delivery, and control and monitoring. Those signed up for SAM’s Partner Portal will have access to all e-learning tools.

The first training event is expected to take place this month.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—NEP The Netherlands has been working with Ziggo Sport to build out its production facilities since last June, and one move its made is to bring in Snell Advanced Media technology for its live IP production workflow. The SAM gear brought in to support the system includes production switchers, live replay systems and playout technology.

Kula

The Kahuna 4K switcher is being utilized by NEP as the backbone of the switching resource in the Ziggo facility, but its main priority is to support the deployment of SAM’s Kula system. The Kula sits in the data center with its control panels in the production control rooms and connected over the IP network. The Kahuna comes in to play in situations where the Kula needs additional switching power support.

SAM has also provided its LiveTouch replay and highlight system to the new facility. Each control room features a LiveTouch control panel, connected to the servers in the data center over IP. LiveTouch is capable of handling multiple resolutions, multiple inputs and can publish to social media immediately.

NEP has also added SAM’s ICE Channel-in-a-Box and Morpheus automation system to handle Ziggo’s playout its six channels.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—2017 is poised to be a big year for IP, if the findings from Snell Advanced Media’s Global IP Barometer study pan out. Based on the responses from 1,000 media industry professionals from Europe and North America, SAM’s study put a particular focus on the timeline for IP’s transition, the internal skills gap, and industry and technology concerns.

According to the study, a majority of respondents in both North America and Europe are preparing to begin IP production infrastructure projects in the next nine months; specifically 64 percent of Europeans and 56 percent of Americans. Over the next two years 54 percent of Europeans and 50 percent of Americans are expected to move to an IP production workflow. The report indicates that this IP migration is driven by the desire of improved flexibility and reduced cost of infrastructure, with both earning 35 percent of the response. Meanwhile, respondents listed migrating media studios to IP infrastructure as their number one priority (35 percent).

Despite the desire to make the move to IP, the study finds that most media organizations don’t have the needed technical skills in-house for a smooth transition. Just 36 percent of North Americans and 28 percent of Europeans believe they have the skills in place, while 47 percent of Americans and 56 percent of Europeans believe they partially meet the required skills. But respondents look to be working on that, as the study found 69 percent of all respondents will train current staff to bridge the gap, and 22 percent plan to bring specialist consultants to support the transition.

The last of the big three focuses on the study found that the most important priorities and concerns for respondents. Adopting open standards was priority number one for 47 percent of respondents. The biggest concern is the compromising of quality productions at 31 percent, followed by the cost of the transition at 27 percent.

Additional findings included the fact that 81 percent of respondents will take either a hybrid SDI/IP or pure IP approach to current infrastructure projects; 71 percent of European will go the hybrid route, while 65 percent of Americans will do the same.

NEW YORK—Snell Advanced Media (SAM) will be presenting its new multiplatform News Solution together with its Go! Production Suite providing support for any format of video, ultra-fast editing, automated versioning and multiplatform publishing. SAM will also demonstrate its IP Edge Routing System, ICE Channel-in-a-Box and Morpheus Automation as well as its 1 M/E and 2 M/E production switcher, Kula.

The SAM News Solution is a scalable ecosystem for fast turnaround editing and news production. With its latest addition of the Go! Production Suite, News Solution enables news outlets to access and edit content from anywhere on a range of newsroom and mobile devices.

Go! is browser-based and enables “edit everywhere” capability with specific workflows optimized to quickly get breaking news out to social media and on the air. Featuring an edit timeline that works as you’d expect, remote live media can be viewed and combined with locally shot content, including a voice over. Combined with video and audio transitions, users can quickly and easily add the finesse they need to produce a news package suitable for broadcast and social media.

SAM will be located on the show floor in booth 503.

SEAL BEACH, CALIF.—Henry Engineering would like to introduce customers to SAM, or System Alert Monitor. The new system is described by the company as a “watchdog” that monitors equipment and systems in a broadcast facility.

SAM is able to monitor up to 15 status inputs from station equipment. When a fault is detected, SAM can generate a visual, audible or email alert. The system also can detect a ringing phone line.

Henry Engineering will make SAM available to customers starting in November at a price of $695.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Some of SAM’s technology has made its way across the pond to the west coast as Los Angeles-based broadcast and production facility Vista Studios has grabbed 4K and IP gear from SAM. All of the technology will be used for Vista Studio’s 4K production studio.

Some of the SAM imports that Vista Studios is deploying are the Sirius 850 multi-format router and IQ Modular intelligent infrastructure. The Sirius serves as the studio’s core routing infrastructure and offers operational flexibility and power with SAM’s Advanced Hybrid Processing technology and monitoring capabilities with the router’s MV800 multiviewer. Dedicated multiviewer output slots in the Sirius router allow the MV800 to provide alarming and monitoring. The IQ Mix cards are used to receive IP sources from outside the building, with the ability to convert the sources to SDI for downstream processing and encapsulate back to IP if necessary.

The Kahuna 9600 production switcher was brought in to work with UHD. FormatFusion3 technology in the switcher can convert input and output signals to UHD, and each M/E outputs UHD as well as HD simultaneously. It also has both SDI and IP inputs and outputs.

Vista has standardized on an automation system that utilizes SAM’s Morpheus automation and Momentum MAM technology to ingest, segment and playout channels. The workflow can integrate with a network’s own traffic system or can be used with a manual playlist imported into Morpheus.

Additional tech added to Vista’s studio includes ICE channel-in-a-box for ingest, QC and playout of a full network feed or segments with full branding capabilities. Alchemist XF format and framerate conversion software was also included.

The new Vista Studios facility is currently under development.

INDIANAPOLIS—WFYI Public Media is a PBS member television station that produces local and original content across Indiana. Recently we decided it was finally time to upgrade our control room. However, we faced the common challenge of producing high-quality content while keeping costs low. More specifically, we were looking for a switcher that could provide excellent production capabilities and flexible operations without the costs typically associated with large production switchers.

Frank Konerman, WFYI videographer, operates the Kahuna switcher. We originally heard about Snell Advanced Media at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. WFYI kept an eye on the development of the company’s Kahuna switcher series through several years of visiting SAM’s booth. WFYI decided to have a “switcher shoot-out” with other vendors Sony and Grass Valley in July of 2015. We invited several technical directors that switch our weekly TV shows to participate in our demonstration and testing. Ultimately, Clayton Taylor, vice president of production, and myself made the final decision to purchase the Kahuna.

KEEPING THE FUTURE AFFORDABLE
Our business programming is a significant priority at the station, which airs across all of Indiana. It was imperative for us to make a smooth and efficient transition that would yield the feature-rich results we were looking for.

Delivering more firepower, flexibility and 4K capabilities than our previous switcher, SAM’s Kahuna 4800 gave us the freedom to combine mixers, keyers and DVE effects to create any on-air style. We were originally using a Grass Valley switcher, but the performance of SAM’s Kahuna 4800 with its price point was unrivalled.

For public media organizations like WFYI, our switch to the Kahuna 4800 was ideal because it provided a solution for the high-quality production we needed at an affordable price. Not only were we able to save money, but Kahuna also dramatically reduced the overhead costs associated with show set-up times and allowed us to turn around content within seconds. Its easy-to-use interface and smooth integration for any production setting helped us reduce both integration and deployment costs that eventually led us to further savings in training and support.

FLEXIBLE FORMATS
At WFYI Public Media, we broadcast and distribute a large volume of high-profile shows, so it’s essential to be able to produce these shows weekly in various formats. SAM’s Kahuna 4800 provides us with a great degree of flexibility allowing us to work with a wide array of video layouts and graphics.

In fact, as of April, we’ve already been able to broadcast multiple live shows including “Inside Indiana Business with Gerry Dick” and “Indiana Week In Review” using the new switcher. It’s been a truly seamless process and we’re looking forward to further exploring its potential.

Pass serves as director of engineering of WFYI Public Media, Indiana’s flagship PBS and NPR member station and the home of WFYI Productions. He possesses more than three decades of broadcast and management experience, having successfully directed new business operations, managed media production companies, and facilitated major communications and engineering operations. He can be contacted atNpass@wfyi.org.

For more information, please visitwww.s-a-m.comor call 212-944-6820.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—SAM has hired Said Bacho as chief business development and marketing officer, effective immediately.

A well-connected and respected broadcast media industry executive, Said’s career has been focused on strengthening business in developed and emerging markets in EMEA, as well as delivering sustained profitable growth and developing new accounts and channel partners across live production, production, editing and finishing, playout and delivery, infrastructure and image processing environments.

“Said brings a wealth of industry knowledge and experience to SAM and will play a key role in continuing the transformation of our organization,” said Tim Thorsteinson, SAM CEO. “Said is a leading figure in the industry and will bring valuable market insights to SAM.”

Having previously worked with Grass Valley and Harris Broadcast (now Imagine Communications and GatesAir), Said has knowledge of more than 30 countries across Eurasia, North Africa, the Gulf, CIS and Indian subcontinent.

“I’m really looking forward to working with SAM,” Bacho said. “The considerable new product launches we are witnessing at NAB, combined with the recent changes in senior leadership, together with the commitment from the Board, are inspiring. This is a great time to be joining SAM.”

Prior to Harris, Said managed Pinnacle Systems / Avid business in MENA from 2000 to 2005, and worked at TekVideo and Future Television in sales and technical management roles respectively from 1993 to 2000.

Bacho completed the Executive Education Program at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia and holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the American University of Beirut.

LAS VEGAS—With an eye on those acronyms that are defining today’s broadcast industry—namely 4K, HD and IP—Snell Advanced Media (SAM) will debut new production switchers, finishing tools and standards conversion gear, among other solutions at its NAB Show booth this year.

This is the first NAB Show in which the newly named company—formerly known separately as industry stalwarts Quantel and Snell—will exhibit under the SAM banner.

“We want it to be understood that by bringing together Quantel and Snell, we now have a truly unified technology strategy that allows us to push forward into new worlds like 4K and IP and serve our customers in an intuitive and different way,” said Tim Felstead, head of product marketing at SAM. The newly branded SAM first debuted at the 2015 IBC Show.

SAM will debut Kula, a 1080p/4K-capable production switcher available in 1- and 2M/E versions.KULA FOR 4K
At this year’s NAB, SAM is principally focused on 4K and IP solutions that give broadcasters a clear migration path to both of these important technologies, Felstead said. Leading off its announcements is the new Kula, a 1080p/4K-capable production switcher available in 1- and 2M/E versions.

“Today’s broadcasters face a situation that can only be described as ‘challenging,’” Felstead said, as content is being captured and delivered in a wider range of formats than ever before, but still must be managed within the same production workflow. According to Felstead, Kula addresses this need by drawing on the heritage of Kahuna and that switcher’s ability to handle multiple formats.

Kula illustrates the “type of versatility that SAM is known for which gives broadcasters the production tools they need today and a risk-less path to upgrade their architecture down the line,” Felstead said.

“Added to this,” he said, “we’re seeing content creation explode beyond the traditional broadcast sphere, so there are a growing number of organizations that want to benefit from high-production values in order to achieve the flexibility and onscreen result they desire.”

To handle different format requirements, Kula uses the company’s FormatFusion3 signal-processing technology to mix any format, up to and including 4K, thereby eliminating the need for external conversion equipment. The switcher is targeted for broadcast production, sports, and house of worship environments as well as to entertainment and conference events.

SAM will also show off its Kahuna production switchers, which are also suited to 4K, HD and IP environments, as well as its LiveTouch sports highlights system, built around the company’s latest 4K production servers that can be used for replay, slowmotion and editing.

The company will also show the newest version of its Sirius 800 integrated multiviewer, now shipping with Media Biometrics, a proprietary technology that generates signatures from video, audio and metadata and can be used for monitoring.

SOFTWARE & CONVERSION
Software-driven platforms are a key priority for the company, and as such, SAM plans to transition many of its products to a data center model, including the ICE, ICE IP, and ICE SDC channel-in-a-box platforms. For those legacy solutions that are not currently IP-ready, SAM will show its IQ Edge processing solution, designed to bridge the gap to IP environments by offering many image and audio processing capabilities in an integrated package.

“Fundamentally, IP-Edge influences the way that SAM products work together within an IP environment,” he said. “It is open standards-based and enables combined IP and SDI routing control.” The goal with IP-Edge is to give customers a bridge to IP environments with the least amount of technical and business risk possible.

Getting deep inside the broadcast plant, SAM plans to show its Alchemist XF standards converter, which now supports 4K and HDR; as well as introduce Alchemist Kronos for content duration adjustment. The company will also show the UHD1000 for real-time 4K conversion, the newest member of the company’s KudosPro signal processing product line.

Coloring will also be a highlight for SAM this year in the form of the Quantel Rio 8K, a color, editing and finishing tool that can be used for long-form grading for TV finishing and for post. New features include HDR and wide color gamut capabilities, a new interface, cloud tracking, and enhanced integration with Avid systems.

SAM will also debut an edit timeline to its Go! remote production suite that will give mobile device editors access to live and recorded content to build stories, with timline editing and voiceover. Finished sequences will be ready for immediate publishing to social media, web and TV.

SAM is in Booth SL1805.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Brazilian Pay-TV operator Sky Brasil has reportedly boosted its channel count numbers with the recent acquisition of SAM’s Sirius 840 and 850 routers. Sky Brasil has installed the Sirius 840 router in Sky Brasil’s Alphaville, Brazil facility, while the Sirius 850 is will be housed in its Jaguariuna, Brazil facility, which is currently being built.

Sirius 840

The Sirius 840 router provides a 576x576 frame size. The 850 is a 576x1152 frame size, but can expand to 1152x1152 dual-frame size as required. Both routers feature performance cross-point modules for routing of SD, HD, ASI, 3Gbps and embedded audio signals.

Sky Brasil says that the installation of the Sirius routers will help for a transition to IP in the future. The SAM routers offer an integrated control system for both SDI and IP architectures, as well as IP and SDI monitoring using hybrid multiviewer technologies that include SAM’s Media Biometrics monitoring technology.

Sky Brasil is headquartered in Sao Paulo. SAM is located in Newbury, England.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—After previously testing its 4K broadcast capabilities during a Toronto Raptors basketball game, Rogers Media has announced it will acquire Snell Advanced Media products to support its 4K and HDR broadcasting services. As part of the installation, Rogers Media will add SAM’s Kahuna 9600 switcher, Morpheus automation and ICE Channel-in-a-Box units. Rogers has also installed main and backup 4K sQ servers.

Rogers has had previous experience with the Enterprise sQ servers. The UHD version of the sQ 1800 server stores 4K media as single image files with the goal of avoiding synchronization or alignment errors. The server is coupled to a 4K-enabled version of the Qube editor for recording, editing and playback from a single mainframe. Playback control was from the existing SAM Morpheus installation.

With the Kahuna switcher, Rogers Media can handle multiple formats simultaneously with its FormatFusion 3 technology. An inbuilt multiviewer provides source overview and mixer previews. There are also macro buttons for access of graphics insertion and replay for the switcher’s still and clip stores.

Rogers’ plan to move forward with 4K broadcasts was announced in 2015 and included a series of technical trials and proof-of-concept trials. The Canadian media company’s planned 4K programming package moving forward will feature more than 100 live sporting events, including all Toronto Blue Jays home games for the upcoming 2016 season and more than 20 NHL games.

Rogers Media is a division of Rogers Communications.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Effective immediately, Paul Horton has been named the new chief financial officer for Snell Advanced Media. Horton’s appoint is part of the restructuring of SAM’s leadership team, which the company says is nearly complete.

Paul Horton

Horton brings 20 years of experience as a senior financial professional in the manufacturing sector of the industry, including time with both private and public equity backed businesses.

“Paul has a proven track record of value creation, and his knowledge and experience will be invaluable as we continue to grow and transform SAM,” said Chris Hurley, managing director of Lloyds Department Capital and SAM Board director.

LAS VEGAS—Snell Advanced Media will debut its Kula 4K-capable production switcher at the 2016 NAB Show. Available in 1M/E and 2M/E versions, Kula supports 4K, 1080p/HD and SD formats, making it future-proof for high value production tasks.

Kula

SAM will also show Kahuna production switchers, suited to 4K, HD and now IP environments, and its Live Touch sports highlights system, built on its latest 4K production servers, for efficient replay, slow-motion and editing.

And SAM’s new Sirius 800 integrated multiviewer is now shipping with Media Biometrics, which enables automated monitoring to not only understand the quality of media, but whether it’s the right media.

With its software-driven platforms, SAM will transition many products to a datacenter model, including its ICE, ICE IP, and ICE SDC channel-in-a-box solutions. And SAM will show its IQ Edge processing solution, developed to bridge the gap to IP environments by offering many image and audio processing capabilities in an integrated package.

SAM’s Alchemist XF standards converter now supports 4K and HDR, and several times faster than real-time processing for HD content. SAM is introducing Alchemist Kronos, which enables content duration adjustment. And for cost effective real-time 4K-conversion, SAM is introducing the UHD1000 to its KudosPro signal processing range.

For long-form grading in the TV finishing and high-end post markets,

SAM will also show new features for its Quantel Rio 8K color, editing, and finishing tool, including HDR and Wide Color Gamut, a new interface, enhanced Avid integration and an accurate cloud tracker.

The 2016 NAB Show takes place in Las Vegas, April 18-21. Snell Advanced Media will be in booth SL1805. For more information, visit www.nabshow.com.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—Combining SD, HD and 4K capabilities, the new Kula production switcher is the latest announcement from Snell Advanced Media. This new switcher is based-off of SAM’s Kahuna switcher, but includes FormatFusion3 technology to mix formats up to and including 4K.

Kula

The Kula is capable of handling 4K/1080p/HD and SD in 1M/E and 2M/E versions. The 2M/E HD/SD version can be switched to the 1M/E 4K mode. The production switcher also provides three control panels that can be expanded with additional modules in the Kahuna range. Additional features include up to five key layers per M/E, 20 channels of DVE and floating/auxiliary key resources, up to 36 inputs and 18 assignable outputs, and an internal clip and still store.

The Kula is designed to work for live events, broadcast production, sports, house of worship, entertainment and conference/events.

SAM will begin shipping the Kula in May 2016 for $17,000.

Last year, the newly combined Snell-Quantel appointed long-time industry veteran Tim Thorsteinson as its new CEO. Recently, TV Technology Editor in Chief Tom Butts sat down with Tim to discuss the latest on the Snell-Quantel merger—which resulted in a new name: Snell Advanced Media, or SAM—as well as the state of our industry and how important the upcoming NAB Show will be to SAM.

TV TECHNOLOGY: When we spoke at IBC, I got the sense from you that you really wanted to ramp up SAM’s presence in North America, you didn’t feel it was adequate based on past history with Snell and Quantel.

TIM THORSTEINSON: Right, it was pretty fragmented. Frankly, they (company employees) had to come back to the U.K. for stuff too often because we didn’t have the skill sets in the geography. For example, you need experts in the market that can articulate your IP roadmap and can consult with key customers. If you’re flying people in from elsewhere and they have funny accents, you don’t appear to be a global business. That’s been my experience in the past.

TVT: Do you feel the North American market is more provincial than other areas of the world?

THORSTEINSON: I find all areas of the world to be very provincial. The Japanese market loves people who speak Japanese. In the old days, people in Asia were quite impressed if somebody came from headquarters that had the “secret answer,” but it's less so today. I think you need to have competent, local people everywhere in the world if you want to grow your business. We try not to say anymore, "When they get up in the U.K., we'll be able to give you an answer." That's not the right answer.

TVT: Are there other things that have changed in the way business has been conducted in this industry in the last five years?

THORSTEINSON: It’s a lot less relationship-oriented. If you know people, they’ll take an appointment, which is nice, but it may be one.

TVT: The decisions are not necessarily made by the same people anymore?

THORSTEINSON: No, and the other thing is if you take somebody into an account, you can take one suit like me that has a band of knowledge, but the other person with me better be very technically competent because the customers are going to get right down to bit-rates and a level of technical detail that I'm done with in about 15 seconds. You can't have layers of guys in shiny looking suits; people aren't impressed with that anymore. They don't have the time because they're more thinly staffed than they used to be and they're under tremendous pressure.

Tim Thorsteinson

The good news is every customer has different performance criteria depending on their application, and then you have to be price competitive and you have to have a support structure. It's just a lot harder than it used to be.

TVT: Is it because there’s less specialization?

THORSTEINSON: Yes, and there's less business. Notwithstanding all of the things you read from industry pundits, I think if you added up the capital budgets around the world for our available market, they're smaller. I've been in the middle of the industry consolidation for 15 years now, and there's still a lot left. There are still way too many suppliers. The customers are well served because there are lots of good suppliers. One of the challenges I think is that it's hard for the suppliers to invest and to drive forward the technology to the degree that we want to. Up until now, the industry's been mostly served by relatively smaller suppliers;, big $100 billion companies have not been providing equipment, our available market is approximately $5 billion. It's a difficult time in the industry because, one, you have all this technical change going on and, two, balance sheets and operating budgets are strained so it's hard for people to keep investing.

TVT: Do you think the move to IP is causing more insecurity among vendors?

THORSTEINSON: Definitely. There’s going to be a whole swath of revenue that goes away.

TVT: What do you mean by that? Are you talking about a move to commodity hardware?

THORSTEINSON: Twenty years ago at Tektronix, I would go to the board meeting and some board member would say, "Oh, we make a routing switch. Doesn't Cisco make a routing switch? Can't we be like Cisco?" Eh, it's not really the same thing. "Well, will a Cisco switch do what our switch does?" Peter Symes would write a white paper and three or four years later, it would happen again. It's happened four or five times. Well, guess what? Those switches are going to be able to operate like a broadcast router used to pretty soon, and what a lot of the suppliers are going to be selling is the “goes in” and “goes outs,” that transition SDI to IP and back, but not the switch. That whole router market—a $300-$400 million market—is going to get smaller quickly I think.

TVT: You go way back on this. I remember years ago attending Grass Valley events and you talking about the move to software so this is not really new. This is something that's been going on for 10 to 15 years.

THORSTEINSON: No, but I've got enough historical perspective to tell you it's really happening now. If you take the big guys in the industry, the Evertzes and Beldens and Imagines—we're not at that level— but you take all those guys; huge amounts of their revenue are hardware today and if you consider where their margins are coming from today, the vast majority of it is hardware. Well, that's all going to change and for those of us that have manufacturing operations, fewer products are going to be moving through it. In the playout business, we're already to the point where people don't really want to buy the hardware, they just want to buy the software.

TVT: How important is the NAB Show this year to you guys?

THORSTEINSON: Massive. The most important one ever, I think. I mean, we relaunched ourselves as a company. We changed the name, and we added a few new products, but people have to come to the show and see the new technology and the direction the business is heading and say, "Wow, this is a lot different company than it used to be."

TVT: Is that fair to put the success, the future of the company on one show?

THORSTEINSON: No, but I'd have a full head of hair if it were a fair world. The world's not fair, but frankly it's clear, which is nice. What we need to do is not confusing at this point, which is good. We're getting the same message from every customer. We have helped one company get on-air to 4K quite successfully, and we have a couple of other really compelling deliveries in the pipe, in the short term. We'll go into the show with three to five deployments, and they all want to know, ‘OK, great,’ but HDRs got to be on their roadmap. We're going to be deploying software-only solutions, and there will be an announcement around that, but so will everyone else.

TVT: Image quality has always been a big selling point for Snell. Is that still very important to you? Are you afraid that message may get lost?

THORSTEINSON: That's an interesting point. Our biggest deal on the payoff side—we haven't announced it—but it was a $4-$5 million deal that we got in the last half of the year, highly competitive. We won it because of image quality. But again, it's a software-oriented playout solution. The reason we won is because we were able to take the ICE Morpheus stack and work with the folks with Alchemist and other vendors, and tune their hardware to get a compelling picture on whatever device you have. We won that because of image quality. I don't think the demand for high image quality is going to go away.

TVT: You think it will increase?

THORSTEINSON: I would think so. The problem is the customer wants everything. Customers want high image quality, lower prices and flexibility. They are so demanding, right?

Then again, their world is changing dramatically, but it's a good time to not be huge because we can make changes and reposition ourselves. You look at these big, big companies, and I'm talking about the $100 billion and up; how they change is tough because of the restructuring they have to do. I mean, we have plus or minus 500 people. I've been here 10 months, and the headcount has been flat, but we changed out about 70 people.

TVT: What do you mean by “changed out?”

THORSTEINSON: Well, people left and people came in with different skill sets. My guess is we will have, in two or three years, the same amount of people but half of them are going to be different.

TVT: Is your goal to try to keep the headcount the same or reduce the headcount?

THORSTEINSON: It all depends. My goal is to increase the number of engineers that I have as a percentage of my total headcount. That's been my goal in every company I've ever run. Ideally, one person can do all the finance in the company, and one person can do all the IT, and one really smart person can do all the marketing, and I don't need anything else. Then I have a bunch of people designing product, and they never break, so I don't need a whole lot of support people. That is kind of the ideal business model.

As a matter of fact, we have already combined all of our support, operation; what used to be Quantel and Snell, it's all one now. We've cross-trained all the support people. We’ve combined all the manufacturing and marketing. There's still some product specialists, people that are more specialists and work more products than the switching and routing, and that will always be the same. We're 80 percent of the way down the path of combining the company. The way I usually approach an organization is to figure out what the objectives are and then figure out what people and processes you need in place to meet those objectives. It's tough because there's not a ton of stability. If you look at the job loss in the industry of good people in the last two or three years ... I know you know a lot of them.

There's so many good people no longer employed, which obviously is not a pleasant thing. It's just been a really rough couple of years for the industry.

TVT: How is business now?

THORSTEINSON: Thankfully on the calendar year, our business was up about 15 percent in the second half of the year from the first half of the year. We had a strong fourth quarter. I think we made money. I say that I think because we haven't closed our books yet. We met all of our financial targets. I hear people say that all the time, and sometimes your targets are not that aggressive. They were the targets the board was looking for. We recapitalized the business. We finished the year strongly. We added 20 engineers over the year and got the product roadmap solidified towards IP and 4K and HDR and those kinds of things. All in all, I think it was a pretty good year; a lot of change, obviously, for everybody in the organization. It's tough because this is a legacy business, so I would say embracing change has been a challenge for most.

I think as we move into 2016, the business is definitely better. There are a lot of good opportunities on a global basis. It looks like the market is at least stabilized and maybe getting stronger, but it's more of an incremental step up from my perspective. My expectation is, from a market perspective, 2016 will be a better year.

TVT: How has the reaction been to the name change? Do you find people using SAM or Snell Advanced Media?

THORSTEINSON: I find people using SAM a lot. It doesn't seem to have been a major factor, frankly, from my perspective. I think people are glad it's one coherent brand, but I don't think it's become a big issue.

TVT: SAM is a member of AIMS (Alliance for IP Media Solutions). What is your opinion of AIMS? Why was it needed?

THORSTEINSON: We're not big enough to develop our own proprietary approach to this space. We are ultimately going to develop IP switches that interface with Belden’s routers and they're going to do the same with ours and others. That was the thought behind the consortium.

TVT: Is there a timeline you’re working toward?

THORSTEINSON: You know we’re at the front end to be really honest. We’ve yet to have the first of these meetings. From our perspective, it’s in the early stages. My guess is NAB will be used as an opportunity to really articulate the time frames, and schedules, and interoperability testing, and things like that.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—It’s all about Momentum when it comes to the recent announcement from Snell Advanced Media that it has the acquisition of Italian-based workflow and asset management specialist Mantrics. The two companies will collaborate on further developing the Momentum technology, which is a MAM and workflow management system that launched in 2014 by SAM.

Momentum

Mantrics developed the core technology behind the Momentum system, and now Mantrics development team will work with SAM’s U.K.-based team to push the evolution of the Momentum toolset.

The Momentum allows users to define and manage their own workflows through an intuitive interface while also having the ability to scale to handle complex real-world scenarios. SAM aims for Momentum to be used by both production and playout sides of the industry.

Mantrics is a privately held joint venture by Digital Video and Video Progettin. It was established in 2008.

NEWBURY, ENGLAND—SAM has announced that it will be participating in the recently formed Alliance for IP Media Solutions, or AIMS. This independent trade association is making its priority to “bring IP solutions to market that offer complete interoperability, are based on open standards, and integrate seamlessly into media workflow environments to foster industry innovation and efficiency.”

AIMS is currently focusing on promoting the adoption, standardization, development and refinement of open protocols for media over IP. The group’s initial emphasis is on VSF TR-03 and TR-04, SMPTE 2022-6, and AES67.

“AIMS’ mandate dovetails precisely with the issues that we have identified from our R&D work and initial IP deployments on the production and playout side: we need to push forward with standardization,” said Tim Thorsteinson, CEO of SAM. “Without this, we won’t see a true market develop around IP products and therefore the full benefits won’t be realized.”

NEW YORK—Snell Advanced Media is preparing to make its first stop at CCW since it rebranded from Quantel and Snell. SAM plans to show a number of its products for companies business and operational needs.

The Kahuna IP switcher is one of the products that SAM intends to show at the conference. The Kahuna is now offered as either an all-IP or standard SDI system. Another new IP system is the ICE IP for playout. The ICE IP unit adds IP I/O capability and incorporates all the operational, technical, regulatory and commercial functionality required for broadcast playout. The ICE can also integrate with the Morpheus playout automation system.

SAM will also display the Enterprise sQ system for news and sports production. The Enterprise sQ ecosystem contains workflow, control, editing and media asset management components. It can also integrate with the LiveTouch sports highlights and replay solution.

The Sirius 830 routing switcher and Quantel Rio with V3 software are also part of SAM’s presentation.

SAM will be located at booth 903 at CCW 2015, which takes place from Nov. 11-12 in New York. For more information, visit www.ccwexpo.com.

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS—Earlier this year, industry veteran Tim Thorsteinson was tapped to oversee the merger of Snell and Quantel. At the IBC Show last month, the company was rebranded “SAM,” an acronym for Snell Advanced Media. TV Technology Editor-in-Chief Tom Butts sat down with Tim at the show to discuss the company’s legacy and its future in the broadcast/media production marketplace.

TVT: Why SAM?

TIM: We went through a fairly logical process relative to the rebranding. We looked at the two brands and the brand equity they had in the marketplace and where we thought we were going in the future and decided that ultimately we didn’t want to divorce ourselves from both brands because of the cost—both financial and psychically. Disconnecting wasn’t something we wanted to do. Of the two brands, Quantel is stronger in post-production and editing and Snell’s stronger in playout and some of those areas, so we decided to keep the Snell brand and carry it forward. We’ve really positioned the company away from traditional broadcast and more towards advanced media.

TVT: How are your customers reacting?

TIM: I think the Quantel customers want to see a product roadmap going forward and how we’re going to transition their media into the OTT world and we have a good story there. We’ve been actually delivering it to them over the last several months. We’ll probably use the Quantel brand in that workflow area fairly extensively.

TVT: Are you changing any product names?

TIM: We’re not changing any product names but Quantel post production products will be rebranded Qantel Rio. On the broadcast side, Enterprise sQ is still the workflow system we sell. [Renaming a product] generally doesn’t change the technology of the product roadmap which is what our customers were primarily interested in. We have a significant installed base, particularly in playout with Morpheus. We’ve hired 27 new engineers and we’ll be hiring more. A name change is a name change, but what customers want to know is ‘what’s your road map.’ We’re one organization now. When I joined in March it was literally two separate companies—two separate sales companies, two separate support and engineering organizations—now they’ve all been combined. So we have one engineering team, one support team, one sales force. Where we were Quantel or Snell before, we’re all SAM.

TVT: How has the rebranding and merger affected the company’s culture?

TIM: Cultures take a long time to change. We’re making good inroads in improving the culture but it’s hard work and takes a long time. From my perspective, the culture used to be pretty high-end, pretty inwardly focused, pretty expensive. Our goal is to be quicker to market and do a better job of listening to the market, to be more open. Take storage for example. We’re not a storage supplier so we need to develop software to work with more standards-based storage. Things like Adobe Plug-ins, obviously Adobe’s got a great following. We need to play in that ecosystem, not try to fight it.

TVT: How important is software development to SAM now?

TIM: We’re much more a software company today than we have ever been in the past. A significant amount of our revenue comes from customer support and software systems. If you look at Morpheus and ICE, it’s primarily software and ultimately it will be entirely software someday. The interesting thing for all of us—the ‘A’ companies and us—is how do you remain relevant in the editing world today. And from my perspective it’s more about the management of the content and the flow of it, than it is about the actual editing. We want to be open from an editing perspective. We’ll sell our own editing products, but interrelating to an Apple or an Adobe is an imperative of the marketplace. We’re making a big play on asset management; we bought this big company in Rome called Mantrics, and we will do more in that space as we move forward because our big installed base of Quantel News and Sports customers want to open up their systems and use Adobe plug-ins.

TVT: Are you comfortable with the company’s market presence in the U.S.?

TIM: No. A year from now we’ll be more of a global player than we are today. We’ve made an investment in the U.S., Latin America, and Middle East. Snell today is very strong with a small number of customers. We do a lot of our business with a few customers and the goal is to broaden that a bit and compete with the logical players in that space.

TVT: What’s your take on the industry’s transition to IP? How has this affected the company’s bottom line?

TIM: It’s an interesting time. IP kind of levels the playing field and opens up the procurement process to a situation where people are looking at other alternatives today. Business has been good lately, but earlier this year it was a “perfect storm” of negative situations. First there is the transition to IP, then the business model of the end users is changing dramatically.

When I was at other companies, my thought was that the U.S. and Europe markets are mature so they’re going to be relatively low or slow growth and Russia, China, India, Latin America, the Middle East are going to provide growth. But those all shut off. None of us did anything in Russia in the last year and when I was at other companies, we were building a fairly significant business in Russia. China has had its issues economically in the past year. India has had a huge devaluation in its currency, and Brazil has had currency problems. So all those areas that provided the 5-10 percent growth shut off. Between that and the IP transition, it caused people to take pause. But we’re going to be up 5-10 percent for the third quarter over last. For us, business is better—certainly not where we’d like it to be—but better.

TVT: What’s your assessment of the U.S. broadcast market?

TIM: The U.S. market has consolidated and the TV station market is problematic. They now have a “Blackmagic budget,” not an “Evertz” or “Snell” budget. If they can get something for $5,000 that kinda works, great, that’s where their budget is. And I get that. And that’s a big change in the market. If you go back 10 years ago, all those TV stations were investing. I remember selling a $300,000 high-end production switcher in Boston for news. Then everyone in the market needed it. So I sold 4-5 Kalypsos in Boston. That wouldn’t happen today.

On the other hand, the non-traditional media customers—the Amazons and Netflixes and Hulus—they are buying some so that’s a good thing. But certainly the market is smaller than it was.

I think the broadcast market in the U.S. is challenged. For example, for us, in editing, we have a couple hundred-million-pound installed base and I need to figure out how I’m going to be relevant in the market. The TV stations need to figure out what their relevance is. What is their value?

Luckily for us we’re relatively small so if I can figure out how to direct my 200 engineers towards where the customers are going I can have a survivable business model. But it’s a dramatically different world.

Where do broadcast technology vendors fit in? That’s why we’re “advanced media.” We need to figure out where to play in that world. I’ve been in the industry for 20-25 years and this is a time of greatest change. There’s nothing like this.

TVT: Why? Hasn’t our industry always been in a state of transition?

TIM: Yes, but this is much different. In the past, they were more linear progressions. When I got to Grass in 1996, everyone was transitioning from analog to digital, then everyone was going to HD, but those were progressions. This is different. In all those cases, the business model of the customer wasn’t really changing. They were still selling ads and their business model wasn’t any different.

Today, the big difference from my perspective is, they [the customer] don’t really know what their business model is, which drives the desire on their part for flexibility. In our first quarter, we had a broadcaster in Malaysia who spent $5 million upgrading to HD for a fixed plant. But there aren’t many of those. A network is not going to do that today because they’re not sure what the returns are going to be. They would love to be able to just run it all with software on some standard platforms, and someday they will be able to. But people have been asking for that forever.

Eventually the technology will get there. And we’ll all be supplying it, but there will be a huge shakeup. You take the Beldens and the Imagines and the Evertzs and EVSs and Avids; five years from now, they will not exist in their current form because what they’re selling today won’t be being purchased. Once routers go IP and it’s all a Cisco switch, there’s about a $200-300 million hardware business today that we’re all making good money on that’s not going to be there.

TVT: Are you dropping any product lines?

TIM: No, but we’re funneling R&D dollars to where we think the future is going to be. There’s only so many new multiviewer boards you can afford to invest in because there’s already seven on the market and they all work, but five years from now...

TVT: Is there more competition now?
TIM: Yes, for the new technology. The competition is rough.

TVT: What about all the new players like Netflix and Amazon?

TIM: There’s a few large ones, but there’s not like a hundred that we can go sell to.

TVT: What’s your vision for our industry’s future? And for SAM?

TIM: I was looking at a customer demo the other day, where on a timeline, we were able to identify graphically, which content could be used and which couldn’t. There was a part that was green where the customer owned the rights to, there was a part that was yellow which needed to be checked out and red, which couldn’t. Those kind of content management tools are the future, not the editing.

Adobe has a great product for $50 a month, who is going to beat that? So we have to interoperate in that environment. I was in a business once in my career at Tektronix called “network computers.” It was basically a dumb terminal and all the value was in the core. Oracle brought out a product called Multi-user NT and my business was eliminated overnight. My value disappeared and I ended up exiting it for pennies on the dollar than what it was originally worth. That’s the fear. That all of a sudden you wake up one day and you’re not relevant. The good news is we’re small. The smaller nimble companies are going to do well.

AMSTERDAM—The group formerly known as Quantel and Snell has officially announced that it has formed a new company under the banner of Snell Advanced Media. The announcement was made at IBC 2015.

In a statement from CEO Tim Thorsteinson, he revealed that the overhaul has been in the works since the 2015 NAB Show in April, as all aspects of the two companies were brought together to form SAM.

“Our vision is to own the space between content creation and distribution—to be the partner of choice for our customers as they navigate the transition to the new world of agile content and consumer-driven viewing,” said Thorsteinson. “To deliver this, we have increased our investment in engineering across all our product lines—post, infrastructure, news production systems, image processing, MAM, playout and live production.”

SAM also unveiled a few new products that will be on display at IBC 2015. Among them are a transition path to IP routing and cloud-based playout; a 4k live production workflow; and developments on its Media Biometrics media assurance technology.

To find out more about the newly launched SAM, visit their website www.s-a-m.com.