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[Monday at NAB]
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Ross Sees Industry Switch to HD
Company Expands Product Lines and Presence in Key Global Markets
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by Claudia Kienzle,
~ April 14, 2008
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TV TECHNOLOGY
Since last year’s NAB convention, Ross Video has greatly expanded its product lines, presence in key global markets, and customer installations. The company carefully tracks trends in the television broadcast industry and tailors its product lines and service to meet those needs.
“The key trends we see are the industry’s transition to HDTV, and growing demand for automated production control systems for live production,” said Jeff Moore, president of Ross Video, in Iroquois, Ontario, Canada. “These are markets that we are intently focused on.”
At this year’s show, Ross Video will exhibit and demonstrate many new and enhanced products, including three new control panels for its Vision line of production switchers — the Vision 1M, Vision 2M, and Vision 2X — that the company recently started shipping.
The M control panels have 24 crosspoint buttons while the X control panel has 32 crosspoint buttons. With the new control panels, Ross now offers a total of seven for its Vision switchers, including the Vision 1, 2, 3, and 4 control panels.
“These new panels offer additional source buttons and extra plates for optional modules,” said David Ross, chief executive officer for Ross Video. “The Vision line of panels has also been enhanced with the addition of an optional Auxiliary Control ‘backsplash,’ custom control ShotBox modules, and a module on the control panels for displaying video and prompter text.”
“Also, the new Vision MultiScreen feature on the Vision MD/X platform was specifically designed to meet the unique needs of customers doing productions for multiple video screens,” Ross added.
Ross Video also will exhibit expanded configurability to connect any of the seven control panels to either the 3RU chassis or the 8RU chassis and the flexibility to populate the switchers with any number of mix effects.
In December 2007, TV Bandeirantes, one of Brazil’s largest television networks, purchased a new Vision 3 video production switcher, along with an OverDrive production control system. TV Bandeirantes now uses the switcher and automation system to produce TV Bandeirantes news in both HD and SD in conjunction with its existing AP ENPS newsroom computer system. OverDrive automates the control of video servers, audio mixers, robotic cameras and other production gear so that one operator can man them all during a live show and offers a LiveLink MOS interface to newsroom editorial systems.
Rubens Fernando Ortiz, TV Bandeirantes’ director of engineering, said, “Vision’s ability to integrate with OverDrive offers many features, which will only advance us in the market.” TV Bandeirantes is one of many large sales in Latin America, which according to Jeff Moore is a rapidly expanding market for Ross Video.
Ross Video also started off the year with two other noteworthy international sales in Asia and the Middle East. The Legislative Yuan Republic of China invested in a Ross Synergy multidefinition digital production switcher to provide feeds from parliamentary meetings to television stations wishing to cover them.
According to Hsu Hsien He, technical manager for the Legislative Yuan Republic of China, “We chose Ross because of its strong feature set and affordability. We also plan on going HD in the future and Synergy gives us that option.”
Another Synergy customer, WRGB-TV6 (CBS) in Albany, N.Y., recently upgraded its Synergy 4 MDX (purchased in 2006) to HD for the launch of its native HDTV broadcast operation on January 13, 2008. The occasion marked the station’s 80th anniversary as one of the longest continually operating television stations in the nation, since 1928.
Much of Ross Video’s focus at the show will be on OverDrive, and to date, the company has shipped over 80 systems worldwide, including nine of the top 10 North American markets. According to Brad Rochon, marketing product manager for Overdrive for Ross Video, two of the new stations using OverDrive are KXAS in Dallas, Texas and KVEA in Los Angeles, Calif.
“At the NAB Show, we will be releasing version 7.0 of OverDrive, which introduces many new features, including a new OverDrive client/server architecture allowing seamless, no break, back-to-back productions; adoption of MOS workflows; MOS integration with popular graphics and video server systems; and a new interface to Calrec audio consoles,” Rochon said. “We’re leveraging new technologies and MOS workflows to increase our lead in automation production control solutions.”
Other stations that have purchased OverDrive since last year’s show are: WKBN, Youngstown, Ohio; KTUU, Anchorage, Alaska; and RTV Rijnmond, The Netherlands, to name a few. Aside from the television news market, Rochon said that OverDrive also targets sports, worship, and live event productions.
Also at the show, Ross Video will debut version 2.0 of its SoftMetal multidefinition video server for live production, introduced at last year’s show, which adds Media Manager and Transcode Manager applications.
Ross Video, the founder of the openGear terminal equipment standard, is also adding a new 2RU 20-slot rack openGear frame for high-density conversion and distribution applications. Ross Video continues to expand openGear product offerings, complementing the existing distribution and conversion line with the addition of a modular multidefinition switch, an up/down/cross-converter with letter/pillar insertion and a down converter with distribution. The Dashboard control system that controls and monitors all processing cards and frames has also been expanded with the addition of DB-VIEW allowing customers to logically create customized views of signal paths.
According to Eric Goodmurphy, marketing product manager for Ross Video, “openGear has quickly expanded to over 14 partners, and a portfolio totaling over 60 core processing solutions for audio, video, and data. In addition to increasing the platform’s acceptance and deployment, we expect continued development on the DashBoard control system and 3 Gigabit per second processing.”
On March 4, 2008, Ross Video and Sierra Video officially announced that Sierra Video will join the openGear movement and develop terminal equipment products for the openGear platform.
“We expect the new line-up of products that we are announcing at the show to accelerate our growth,” said Moore.
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