With the NAB show just around
the corner, manufacturers are beginning to show their hands, revealing new
products that will be on display in Las Vegas.
Thomson recently held a Media
Summit, where the press could see new Grass Valley-brand products and meet with
top execs. Senior VP Jeff Rosica presented the keynote, and noted, "It is time
for a dramatic change in our industry, and suppliers like Grass Valley must
adapt or die."
Back in '98, Rosica says, the
first tapeless news systems began to emerge. And now, the industry is at a
tipping point, where it's cheaper to store video on disk than on tape. IT-based
equipment, he continued, will allow studios to improve workflow and provide a
lower cost of entry. As such, Grass Valley "will continue to harness the power
of IT equipment available today."
The company will show
improvements to its Edius NLE at NAB. The product came to the company through
its acquisition of Canopus and allows editors to work with video of different
resolutions and aspect ratios on a desktop PC. Edius SP SDI will be presented
with PCI Express acceleration and an I/O board designed to improve performance.
A new member is being added to
the company's film scanner family. The Spirit HD telecine ($698K) shares
components from higher-end Spirit systems and can be upgraded to 2K or 4K as a
studio's business changes from HD to DI.
And Thomson addressed the
delays it experienced in bringing its Infinity camera line to market.
Pre-production versions will be at the show and will incorporate a new CMOS
Xensium 2/3-inch, 2.4-megapixel sensor. The camera will support all HD formats —
progressive and interlaced — natively and noncompressed.
Panasonic also revealed its NAB
plans, which include a 16GB (and soon 32GB) card for its P2 camera line and a
new 2/3-inch, 3CCD P2 camera, which supports 1080i and 720p resolutions. Also
scheduled to appear will be the "P2 Gear" field player/recorder and the
AJ-HDP2000 2K processor, which allows pros to record and process 2K and HD
images to D-5 VTRs for editing, interchange and distribution.