More than 70 journalists from around the world gathered last week in Palm Springs, CA, for Grass Valley's 2006 pre-NAB press event. A series of new and enhanced products and systems were announced and the company’s worldwide strategy for the future was also discussed in detail.
HD production and distribution, IPTV, and sending video to mobile devices were key topics addressed at the event. Thomson’s recent purchase of Canopus and Thales Broadcast & Multimedia Systems (TBM) was also discussed.
Leading off the event were key executives Marc Valentin, president of the Grass Valley business within Thomson; Hiro Yamada, CEO and founder of Canopus; and Jean Michel Lagarde, CEO of TBM. Yamada and Lagarde described how their specific product offerings were ideally suited to the current trends in the video production and broadcast segments and how their technologies fit together within Thomson’s new and existing portfolio.
Looking at the big picture, Thomson has transformed the company into a major global supplier of technologies and systems to make broadcasters and production companies successful in today’s highly competitive media creation and delivery environments.
Several customers, such as the BBC, HBO, KRON Broadcast, Qualcomm, and Cornell University, representing a variety of applications and emerging market segments, were on hand to discuss their uses of Grass Valley systems in an IT-centric, file-immersed workflow.
A new Grass Valley Financial Services program, designed to help customers afford the transition to digital technology, was also announced.
The company said its new Infinity series of multiformat, multicompression and tapeless acquisition products that use removable 35GB Iomega Rev Pro cassettes are on track for an April or May delivery date. No working products were demonstrated.
For more information, visit www.thomsongrassvalley.com.
