Business highlights from broadcast and production

Pixel Power and OmniBus are partnering to integrate Pixel Power's Collage, Graphite and Clarity systems into the OmniBus automation environment. This will enable broadcasters to access the full feature set of Pixel Power's graphics systems within the OmniBus system.

Miranda and Pixelmetrix have reached an agreement to integrate Pixelmetrix's DVStation monitoring system as an option to Miranda's Kaleido-QC visual monitoring solution.

Doremi Labs has moved operations to a new building. Its new address is 306 East Alameda Avenue, Burbank, CA 91502.

The BBC ordered three Kalypso systems from Grass Valley Group for its news operations in Leeds, Tunbridge Wells and London.

HUGHES Network Systems purchased more than $1 million worth of test equipment from Tektronix to test DirecTV receivers.

Televised shopping service QVC chose Videotek's TVM-821D serial digital waveform monitor to test its continuous, live operations. QVC uses the equipment in its edit and graphic suites to check video levels and color saturation for spec violations.

Leitch selected Ciprico's NETarray 1000 RAID solution for use as the storage component in its VR line of video servers. The NETarray provides storage through a built-in Web server.

Harris was chosen by Belo Corp. to provide transmission, encoding and monitoring equipment, and installation services for 19 of its U.S. television stations. Stations that will receive the equipment include KONG-TV in Seattle, KENS-TV in San Antonio and WWL-TV in New Orleans.

Thomson-CSF recently became Thales in a rebranding of its global operations. The new name reflects the company's corporate identity and its new strategy to achieve growth in military and commercial markets. Thales works in the aerospace, defense, and information technology and services industries.

Numeric Video and Getris Images have merged their activities. The two companies' commercial activities will be joined in Getris' commercial offices in Paris, and the research and development activities will be merged on a single site in Grenoble. Both are held by the Dutch company IMadGINE Video Systems.

Raycom Media ordered 29 Thomcast transmitter systems, and 34 encoding and master control equipment packages for installation in its facilities throughout the United States.

Evertz is moving its corporate headquarters to 5288 John Lucas Drive, Burlington, Ontario L7L 5Z9.

Snell & Wilcox recently opened a new office in Miami to expand its service to the Latin American market. The office will provide sales and customer service support to South America, the Caribbean and Mexico, in addition to the greater Miami area.

TVNewsweb.com, a global portal for television news, chose ClipMail Pro and ClipExpress digital media delivery products from Telestream to enable their clients to contribute news content over standard Internet connection.

Thomson Multimedia recently acquired a majority interest in Philips Professional Broadcast through a holding group established by Philips.

Panasonic DVCPRO50 480 progressive scan equipment will be used to produce features on the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers for airing on Fox Sports Net, as well as for features on the WNBA's Cleveland Rockers and video segments for scoreboard presentations during home games. Equipment purchased by the Cavaliers includes a DVCPRO50 Progressive camcorder and two progressive studio VTRs.

Panasonic equipment was also used by the NFL Europe League in New York for training and game analysis applications. The league purchased 67 pieces of DVCPRO and DVCPRO50 equipment including camcorders, slow-motion players and dockable VTRs.

Video equipment rental house Plus8Video purchased two sets of HDTV Cine Style Prime lenses from Fujinon. The lenses are being used on Sony HDW-F900 Cinealta progressive scan high-definition cameras.

Mobile truck NEP purchased eight Fujinon lenses for use on eight Sony cameras in their Supershooter 22.

Orad's CyberSet NT virtual set system is being used by Fox affiliate FOX34 KJTV in Lubbock, TX for the broadcast of its nightly news program. The station also plans to use the system for programming in its in-house stations Telemundo 46 and UPN22.

Los Angeles station KCAl purchased 14 Angenieux lenses for use on its Sony Betacam SX ENG cameras.

PEOPLE Kurt Krinke recently joined Professional Communications Systems as vice president.

Panasonic named Steven Cooperman product marketing manager for video servers and nonlinear editing systems.

Lifetime Television recently named George Krug vice president of network operations.

Omneon announced two new additions to its staff: Gary Stager as vice president of engineering and Adolfo Rodriguez as director of product marketing for platforms.

Colin Pringle was appointed managing director of Solid State Logic.

Exploration captured with DVCPRO HD PBS is using DVCPRO HD equipment from Panasonic to produce an upcoming high-definition special on Robert Ballard's explorations of the Black Sea. The one-hour special will tell the story of Ballard's discovery of evidence of human habitation under the Black Sea. The Panasonic AJ-HDC20A camcorder was chosen to capture Ballard's three-month search.

Fujinon lenses used to shoot Discovery Channel special A recent special on the Discovery Channel allowed viewers to take a look inside the experimental space station before it was completed. It showed how the station was built, and what it would look like, using computer-generated images and feature film techniques. Also featured was the X-38 Crew Return Vehicle, an experimental "lifeboat" for space.

The one-hour special was shot on NASA properties in the United States and Canada, and aired in 149 countries and 32 languages. The special, which included test runs of the X-38, was shot entirely with Fujinon's HA20x7.5, HA15x8 and HA66X13.5 HD lenses.