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[Tuesday at NAB]
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Audio Focus for Densité Improvements
Miranda Adds Loudness Correction, Surround Fixes to DAP-1781
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by Geoff Poister,
~ April 15, 2008
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TV TECHNOLOGY
Miranda Technologies built on its continuing theme of simplifying broadcast workflow with four significant product announcements at this year’s NAB Show.
While three products announced at the company’s Monday press conference are refinements of their routing and playout products, it was audio solutions for HDTV that dominated the press conference.
“Over the past 12 months, we have been focusing on audio solutions for HDTV,” said Miranda CTO Michel Proulx. “Audio problems have been plaguing viewers, so this is what is getting our attention.”
Proulx noted that three main problems are confounding broadcasters’ ability to deliver consistent audio to living rooms: loudness measurement and control, handling Dolby metadata and maintaining 5.1 surround sound when playing out legacy stereo content.
Miranda devised a solution to these problems by modifying its Densité Series DAP-1781 audio processing module, which was initially designed for audio processing, delay matching and shuffling. The DAP-1781 is now also capable of performing loudness measurement and correction, Dolby E and AC-3 encoding and decoding, and high quality 5.1-to-stereo downmixing and stereo-to-5.1 upmixing.
In keeping with Miranda’s strategy of consolidating the number of separate units needed to perform a given task, the DAP-1781, which integrates technology provided by Dolby and Linear Acoustic, performs a job that previously required five cards and three boxes into a system of just three cards.
“We are trying to integrate as much essential functionality onto one card as possible so that our clients’ channel chains are simpler, less expensive and easier to manage,” Proulx said.
Miranda also collaborated with Nvision to create what it touts as the largest-ever multi-image/routing system. This system combines Miranda’s Kaleido-X multiviewer and Nvision’s new NV8576 large-matrix digital multiformat router with native 3 Gbps capacity. One of the system’s strengths is its ability to be scaled to fit the needs of individual users.
Miranda also expanded its Densité Series 3 Gbps-capable, single platform interfacing range by adding advanced HD/SD MPEG-2/4 integrated receiver/decoders and an HD/SD solid-state media player. The new HMP-1801 module stores video to CompactFlash while JPEG 2000 video compression maximizes storage space while preserving broadcast quality.
Miranda also highlighted its multi-channel playout system, based on its new Xchannel playout and branding processor and Sundance Digital’s Titan automation.
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