9 November 2007
Looking to help video professionals easily capture high-quality digital images from either standard- or high-definition video footage, Thomson has announced a low-cost PCI-Express card for PC workstations. The new Grass Valley Pegasus PCI-Express card offers real-time capture of SD and HD video, as well as VGA screen playback. This is made possible because for the first time the powerful Grass Valley HQ software codec from Thomson is now available as a hardware encoder, enabling HD capture to be performed in real-time.
The Pegasus card is perfect for anyone creating or repurposing high quality video content for corporate presentations, or distribution via the Internet or mobile applications. It comes complete with image capture software and a Software Developers Kit (SDK) for system integrators.
This Pegasus card offers HD quality video capture, but without the prohibitively high storage overhead, said Jeff Rosica, Senior Vice President of Thomsons Broadcast & Professional Solutions business unit. This new capture card will enable a broad range of professionals to produce the quality they need to satisfy their clients demands while allowing them to work with both SD and HD source material.
Capturing HD video is very data-intensive, requiring expensive RAID storage. The Pegasus card uses the HQ codec, with its sophisticated compression algorithms, to provide huge storage savings without sacrificing picture quality. The Pegasus PCI-Express card leverages a specially designed HQ-based hardware encoder chip to capture images natively at up to 1920 x 1080/60i and 1280 x 720/60p resolutions. It can also natively display digital signals on a PC at up to 1280 x 1024/60p without down converting the image, and capture video from HDMI, DVI, S-video, and component sources.
In addition, because Pegasus can capture the PC screen display in HD quality, the Grass Valley Pegasus card is the perfect tool for creating training videos and instructional DVDs. The input quality is so clean that subsequent conversions to other distribution formats for example, to mobile phones or the web are cleaner too; and created much more efficiently.
9 November 2007
WORLDSPACE Satellite Radio, one of the world leaders in satellite-based digital radio services, today announced results for the third quarter of 2007 ended September 30, 2007. The Company ended the quarter with 177,644 subscribers worldwide, a loss of 12,689 from the close of the prior quarter, reflecting loss of subscribers in India and the planned cessation of marketing efforts in Europe ahead of the company’s efforts to test and subsequently commence mobile service in Europe. In India, the Company lost 8,713 net subscribers during the third quarter of 2007, reflecting reduced marketing in that region, ending the period with 164,902 subscribers in India, 19% higher than at the end of the third quarter of 2006.
As previously announced, WorldSpace and Fiat Group Automobiles signed a first ever distribution and marketing agreement for satellite radio in Europe. WorldSpace expects that, beginning in late 2008, it will offer customers in Italy, through aftermarket equipment installations available through Fiat’s vast dealership network and other outlets, a mobile satellite radio service with 40-50 channels of music, sports, news and entertainment programming. OEM or factory-installed equipment for Lancia, Fiat and Alfa Romeo models is expected to be available in late 2009. During the quarter, in order to shore up its liquidity, WorldSpace has been engaged in discussions with a variety of potential investors and partners, strategic and financial, about equity and debt financings. The Company hopes to conclude a transaction in the next few months.
WorldSpace Chairman and CEO Noah Samara stated, “We are very pleased with our continuing progress in Italy, as we have now lined up the right partners to make this launch successful, between Fiat, Telecom Italia and Fraunhofer for receiver development. We see great opportunities in this market for a robust mobile service offering, and are confident that, with our partners, we can devise a strategic course to implement our strategy and acquire the financial resources to support it.
“In India, we are operating on a restrained basis,” Samara said. “We are postponing marketing spending until we secure a repeater license that will enable us to provide seamless service to automobiles. We will then be in a position to leverage our streamlined presence in India to launch a successful mobile service there. Over all, we remain confident in the long-term viability and opportunities that our business represents and are encouraged by our initial discussions with a series of potential investors about additional financing.”
For the third quarter of 2007, WorldSpace reported revenues of approximately $3.3 million, roughly flat with revenues of approximately $3.3 million for the third quarter of 2006. Subscription revenue was approximately $1.9 million for the third quarter of 2007, up slightly from approximately $1.8 million in the third quarter of 2006. On a sequential basis, subscription revenues in the third quarter of 2007 were flat with the approximately $1.9 million recorded in the second quarter of 2007.
9 November 2007
The Voice of America’s (VOA) main Internet site, VOANews.com, is currently ranked third in the world as both a Number One Source and Home Page Source in Newsknife’s ranking of the top 10 news sites for the year so far.
Newsknife, a project of the New Zealand software development organization Industry Standard Computing Ltd (ISC), rates news sites on relevance based on analysis of the main Google News site.
For the first ten months of 2007, Newsknife rated VOANews.com as the third-ranked Top Source for news on Google News. VOANews.com was also the third most-cited news source (Home Page Source) on the Google News home page during the same time period. Twenty-five percent of traffic to VOANews.com comes through Google Search and News.
In October, Newsknife ranked VOANews.com as third Top Source for the two top stories on the Google News home page. During this month, VOA’s coverage of the crisis in Burma helped drive traffic to VOANews.com to an all-time high of more than 5 million visits. This is a 16 percent increase over our previous record of 4.7 million visits set in September.
26 October 2007
The AIB is at India’s Satellite and Cable exhibition at the World Trade Centre in Mumbai. Exhibiting at stand D-7, the AIB is showcasing its members and the activities of the organisation to the expected 12,000 visitors to this annual event.
AIB CEO Simon Spanswick is in Mumbai and will be hosting one of the organisation’s renowned ‘Diners Pensant’ on Friday 26 October. More than 24 local media executives and AIB members will come together for an evening of off-the-record discussion and inspiring debate.
“The Indian media market is of tremendous importance and many AIB membes are keen to support and engage with it,” comments Simon Spanswick. “The AIB helps facilitate contacts and our diners pensant, which we hold in different cities around the world, help to ensure that dialogue and conversations start between the international and the local media.”
The SCaT India show opens daily between 1030 and 1830 on Friday 26 and Saturday 27 October.
26 October 2007
Teletrax, the global broadcast intelligence company, has signed a contract with Agence France-Presse (AFP), a leading global news agency, to monitor broadcast usage of AFP’s video news content by its network and station clients. The announcement was made during the News Xchange conference in Berlin.
Earlier this year, AFP announced a major strategic development of its television division and is now delivering a broader array of video features and news packages daily to subscribers worldwide. AFP will use the Teletrax comprehensive suite of video monitoring and reporting services to track broadcast usage of this news content, enabling the organisation to obtain near real-time proof of what material is being used, aiding in the planning of more effective editorial, marketing and sales initiatives.
“It is critical for us to know precisely how our clients are using our news feeds, and what portion of the segments air,” said Erik Monjalous, commercial and marketing director of AFP. “The intelligence gathered will result in greater efficiency and optimum return-on-investment.”
“We are extremely pleased to be working with such a distinguished news agency and to be recognized as a vital part of its global broadcast analysis,” said Andy Nobbs, president of Teletrax. “AFP’s reliance on our broadcast intelligence demonstrates the importance of our service and reinforces the need for news providers, and all content owners, to know exactly how their video is used around the globe.”
26 October 2007
New K2 Software Option Update Now Available To Enable Immediate and Easy Handling of HD Content Within File-Based Workflows
Thomson has developed a faster-than-real time direct file import option with Pathfire to increase the high-definition (HD) content management capability of the Grass Valley K2 Media Server platform from Thomson. The new K2 Capture Service software application enables the fast and easy handling of HD programs as digital files and eliminates the need for any third-party intermediate solutions that can slow the file-handling process considerablyin many cases to much slower-than-real timesaving organizations significant time and money.
Available immediately, the K2 Capture Service option is the result of a close collaboration between Thomson and Pathfire engineers and requires a simple software upgrade to existing K2 systems. In addition, the Capture Service option will also support SD and HD material transfer from the DG FastChannel Spotbox to K2. No additional hardware is needed.
The new K2 Capture Service feature was recently field-tested by Tribune Broadcasting with nationally syndicated content. During the week of September 6th, Tribune went to air at their WGN, KTLA, WXIN, WPIX, WGNO, KHCW, KDAF, KTXL, WPHL WDCW, KRCW, WSFL, and KCPQ locations from a series of remotely located K2 servers, successfully using the new Capture Service feature to distribute the program as a series of HD files faster than the program has ever been distributed before.
Our recent trial of the new K2 Capture Service option proved its value, as it enabled us to ingest and stitch HD Pathfire content rapidly and cost-effectively for play back and delivery to our station group, said Ira Goldstone Chief Technology Officer at Tribune. This type of fast and highly automatic file conversion is sorely needed and critical to our success going forward.
With this new Capture Service capability, Grass Valley K2 users now have a highly efficient file transfer method that allows HD content to be uploaded to a K2 server timeline nearly instantaneously (5-10X faster than real time), without the need for external transcoding or file conversion. By comparison, existing file-transcoding techniques require the need for a separate server for HD transcoding and current speeds are on-average 2X slower than real time (making it nearly 10X slower than the new Capture Service option). With significant amounts of content needing to be uploaded every day, it could easily take operations departments longer than a single eight hour shift to upload and QC less than three hours of material.
Pathfire has always strived to develop solutions that save customers time and money while streamlining their workflows, said Michael Connell, Broadcast Product Manager at Pathfire. This new Capture Service interface to the Grass Valley K2 server platform does exactly that and more. Were pleased to be working with Thomson to add new capability to the K2 Media Server platform.
The Grass Valley K2 Media Server platform from Thomson has been embraced by a wide variety of broadcasters and content providers, with more than 1,400 K2 systems now in operation around the world. All of these systems can be easily upgraded with the new Capture Service automatic file conversion option.
Pricing and Availability
The Capture Service option is available immediately from Thomson, and is priced at $5,000.
