The Broadcast Engineering Pick Hit Awards are the longest-running and most prestigious technical awards in the industry. With a 26-year history, (the first Pick Hit Awards were conferred at NAB in 1984), they have become the most coveted technology award at both IBC and NAB.
The awards recognize innovative broadcast and production technology shown at IBC. They are selected by a panel of independent judges who tour the convention floor looking for new products and technology. The judges then meet and make their selections based on several criteria, including the technical and financial improvements the product can bring to a facility's operation. Broadcast Engineering's editors and publishers have no vote in the selection process, ensuring the winners truly represent outstanding achievement in the eyes of a group of people representative of those making TV happen.
Congratulations to the following manufacturers for their creative technology masterpieces!
Advent NewsLite
Vislink
+44 14 42 43 13 00
www.vislinknews.com
A portable, antenna-agnostic IP-enabled SatCom terminal designed for use with current and new lightweight antenna systems; the modular solution combines the performance of high-bandwidth broadcast contribution feeds with the flexibility of BGAN-type news-gathering all in one sub 23kg transportable case; provides robust, persistent IP-based routing over bonded 3G/4G data modem networks in addition to embedding IP data into an ASI stream for simplex or duplex transmissions over satellite.
Poliscript 3DITOR
Screen Subtitling Systems
+44 473 831700
www.subtitling.com
Subtitle editing software that helps operators design, display and deliver high-quality 3-D subtitles; the system gives the subtitler or stereographer instant rendering with full stereoscopic control and subpixel precision; supports a comprehensive range of 3-D technologies; outputs to 3-D Blu-ray, digital cinema, 3-D broadcast, mobile, VOD and IPTV.
Kezia 50 and 200
Gekko Technology
+44 8448 005 326
www.gekkotechnology.com
LED-based color-tunable hard source spot fixtures devised specifically for film and television; provide high-quality whites (2900°K-6500°K) as well as millions of other colors; control is local or via DMX protocol; can emulate a tungsten light source but with reduced power consumption and little heat emission.
Fusion3G 9901-UDX
Cobalt Digital
+1 217 344 1243
www.cobaltdigital.com
A 3Gb/s HD/SD-SDI up/down/crossconverter from the new Fusion3G range for openGear; offers frame sync and AFD processing plus advanced audio processing with options for Dolby encode and decode, as well as Linear Acoustic AEROMAX loudness processing and upmixing; optional features include color correction, wings insertion and keying, as well as fiber transmit and receive.
HU-200EI/DI
Hitachi Kokusai Electric Europe
+49 6102 833233
www.hitachi-keu.com
An ultra-low delay HD encoder and decoder pair that uses advanced 10-bit technology conforming to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (High 4:2:2 profile); delay time is 8ms (< 1 field process time), making it useful for two-way live interviews without the typical concern over codec delay; provides both IP network transmission and DVB-ASI.
TMD700
Bluebell Opticom
+44 1628 510055
www.bluebell.tv
Provides a compact, rugged optical link for remote point-of-view (POV) cameras; HD-SDI is combined with video for genlock/monitoring with RS-232 and RS-422 data, offering full camera control; 10/100BASE-T provides control of IP-based devices with GPI for tally; done over two fibers for easy deployment.
Speed Rack
Mode-AL
+44 1753 880824
www.mode-al.com
A flyaway monitor stack system for outside broadcast; the hybrid system allows 19in rackmount and nonrack- mountable equipment within the same structure; can be quickly assembled without fixings (nuts, bolts, etc.); all equipment is securely locked into position with a fail-safe twin locking system; the supporting system can be flat packed for economic transportation to its next location.
miniCASTER
TV1
+49 89 960570
www.minicaster.com
H.264 encoder offers high-quality SD from a mobile device; the unit is compact, ultra lightweight, and can be deployed and connected with the high-performance content delivery network in seconds; encodes SDI and composite analog — and soon HDMI to AVC — at 3Mb/s up to 6Mb/s; in the near future, there will also be a point-to-point solution using a second miniCASTER as a decoder.
Teragator
IPV
+44 12233 413690
www.ipv.com
Relational metadata aggregation engine built on semantic Web technologies; the powerful search and discovery engine provides a platform to aggregate disparate metadata sources and data mining services — including business analytics — on a simple graphically presented user interface; combined with the company's low bit rate video technology, it offers improved workflow and cost efficiencies for finding, retrieving and managing assets as well as associated metadata, in order to maximize earnings from media assets.
Test Chest 3G
Murraypro
+44 20 8943 1920
www.murraypro.com
Handheld instrument generates, measures and monitors 3G, HD/SD-SDI and composite video, while generating and measuring embedded audio, AES and stereo analog on VU/PPM histograms using XLR connectors; generation and measurement are totally independent, facilitating parallel operation on different formats simultaneously; provides TDR testing to check coaxial cables of more than 500m length.
RTO series
Rohde and Schwarz
+49 89 4129 13774
www.scope-of-the-art.com
Family of oscilloscopes designed for speed and signal fidelity; capable of analyzing 1 million waveforms per second; feature the first digital trigger system to be implemented in an oscilloscope, which minimizes trigger jitter; user interface provides an overview of even the most complex measurements.
SxD Dual Link
Phabrix
+44 1635 255494
www.phabrix.com
Test generator/analyzer supports 3G-SDI, HD-SDI and SD-SDI and 16 channels of embedded audio; 3Gb/s I/O can be single or dual-link; also supports the different color spaces 4:2:2 YUV, 4:4:4 RGB, 4:4:4 YUV, at 10/12 bit; already configured as a combined generator, analyzer and monitor; supports more than 350 SMPTE video formats.
IF-2D3DD1
JVC Professional Europe
+44 20 8208 6204
www.jvcpro.eu
3-D image processor works as a 2-D-to-3-D converter and as a 3-D L/R mixer for video content producers; housed in a 1U rack-mountable frame, is designed to help 3-D content producers improve their workflow, whether they are converting archived 2-D material or shooting original content in 3-D; performs real-time conversion of 2-D video resources into a variety of 3-D formats using algorithms developed by JVC.
PRM-4200
Dolby
+1 415 558 0200
www.dolby.com/monitor
The 42in LCD reference picture monitor uses a backlight comprised of red, green and blue LEDs that are modulated individually on a frame-by-frame basis; the monitor has an extended dynamic range and DCI/P3 support providing the ability to perform cinema color grading; the 42in diagonal screen emulates the home viewing environment to ensure that content displays properly in the home.
PEP and PCP series
Radio Frequency Systems
+61 397518462
www.rfsworld.com
Broadband UHF antennas designed for digital TV, mobile TV and analog TV; increase flexibility and reduce costs for broadcasters with highly configurable broadband panel array antennas that support individual user-defined polarization ratios (horizontal, elliptical and/or circular polarization) all in the same array.
KONA 3G
AJA
+1 530 274 2048
www.aja.com
The 3G capture card features 10-bit uncompressed video I/O, HDMI 1.4a support for 3-D workflows, 16-channel SDI embedded audio I/O and 16-channel AES digital audio I/O (eight with breakout cable or 16 with optional K3G-Box); includes real-time hardware-based up/down/crossconversion for working with a variety of SD/HD/3G/dual-link and even 2K formats; has a hardware downstream keyer for compositing graphics without rendering.
AERO.file
Linear Acoustic
+1 717 735 3611
www.linearacoustic.com
The loudness manager brings together the company's multipass scaling, loudness range control, and UPMAX II upmixing and downmixing to file-based workflows, without the need for external hardware devices; designed in collaboration with RadiantGrid Technologies, a provider of grid-enabled transcoding, transformation and new media automation service platforms.
OB1
Hego Group
+46 8 534 883 00
www.hegogroup.com
An all-in-one production system designed to enable cost-effective, yet professional productions for live arena-based sports; uses CogEye, a multicamera stitching technique where the operator can view a real-time panoramic video of the entire field of play; comes combined with action replay as well as broadcast-quality overlay and virtual graphics capabilities.
T*AP
Jünger Audio
+49 30 677721 0
www.junger-audio.com
An eight-channel processor that provides automatic and adaptive loudness control using the company's LEVEL MAGIC algorithm; offers “Spectral Signature” dynamic EQ so that the sound can be colored much more easily than can be achieved with a traditional multiband sound processor; provides optional Dolby decoding and encoding, as well as metadata management, along with Jünger Audio's recently introduced 5.1 UPMIX functionality.
Avenue 4445
Ensemble Designs
+1 530 478 1830
www.ensembledesigns.com
The ASI protection switch analyzes the signal based on user settings, providing a reliable way for broadcasters to stay on-air even in the event that the primary feed fails; also generates a new transport clock on the output, which ensures that when the switch occurs, it is completely transparent to downstream equipment.
WFM8000 series
Tektronix
00800 2255 4835 (European Freephone)
www.tektronix.com
SD/HD/3G-SDI waveform monitors (WFM8300 and WFM8200) provide real-time, automated 3G-SDI eye pattern display and jitter measurements to help broadcasters and network operators effectively diagnose signal problems and help equipment designers reduce time-to-market for new 3G-SDI products; also features the new SyncVu display for showing left-eye and right-eye images of 3-D content in a synchronized viewing mode.
Convert DVI
Matrox
+1 514 822 6364
www.matrox.com/video
HD-SDI scan converter lets broadcasters easily and economically get computer-based content to air; ideal for creating broadcast video from applications such as Skype, YouTube, Google Earth, video games and Web browser sessions, as well as mobile phone videos; users can choose to output the entire screen or a region of interest of any size.
