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Visit us at booth SU 5417 at NAB2009 to experience fresh, innovative technologies for transmission, content management, and newsroom automation. To book an appointment, please contact: sales@omnibussystems.com or sales@omnibus.co.uk.
 News Bytes
DIRECTV's HD Channel Expansion
Software powers MPEG-4 transmission at 1080p
by Ken Freed
DIRECTV's digital satellite service now broadcasts 130 channels across the United States to its 17 million customers. To get there, the direct-to-home service introduced innovative approaches to enable HD transmissions, including interactive features which rely more on software than hardware.
 click to read how this was accomplished
| 1080p/24 Output with OmniBus iTX |
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At IBC2008, iTX received the TV Technology Star Award for its implementation of 1080p/24 — the next step in high-end HD broadcast services. Until the first 1080p/24 services are launched, the industry continues to be in the unusual position of consumer sets being capable of receiving higher quality than broadcasters can supply.
As with all its other output formats, iTX’s 1080p/24 solution provides a comprehensive and powerful production, automation and playout solution — including full master control and graphics functionality — outstripping the capabilities of the conventional broadcast playout chain. With exceptional ability to integrate with third party systems and an open IT-based architecture, iTX delivers the most versatile and rapidly evolving solution available while significantly reducing the investment required to launch and operate high-end channels.
1080p/24 capability is available with iTX 1.2 now.
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DECEMBER 2008 OMNIBUS NEWSLETTER
The credit crunch: is there an upside for the broadcast industry?
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Let's look at our industry in the way we look at many other systems in the world, by applying a few evolutionary concepts to it. In the natural world in times of plenty, there are rich resources and life diversifies into a wide variety of forms, some of them highly specialized. We have seen this many times but, in the Jurassic period especially, there was an explosion of hugely specialized life forms — the massive dinosaurs, the huge winged insects — that are no longer with us as a result of some major change in circumstances. Similar processes occur in other fields, including the broadcast industry. Even though conditions have gradually been getting harder for some time now, you can still walk around a tradeshow and see thousands of booths, many of them selling a single product or product line that is highly specialized. There's been enough money in the business for long enough to allow this diversification — technological evolution is like natural evolution in that respect.
This level of specialization is a response to environmental conditions and arises because it meets needs. However, it's not necessarily always a good thing. When there's a huge change in the environment, these very specialized forms of life are too inflexible to adapt and survive, while more agile forms are able to survive though adaptation.
Whether a change of circumstances is brought about by the impact of a comet or a bank lending crisis, the same principles apply. The credit crunch will inevitably have a negative effect on our industry and people are already losing jobs. We can’t ignore that and it’s a serious matter for those affected — but there is also a positive way of looking at the process that results
continued
Ian Fletcher, CTO
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 IT Automation for New Media Platforms
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If you’ve got a legacy video server that’s no longer supported and nearing the end of its useful life, the simplest option is to replace it with a new server. That might seem obvious. However, the downside is that a replacement is not going to be cheap and you will simply have replaced like for like, without moving your operation along in terms of capability and flexibility.
The smarter option in these circumstances is to look further ahead at the long-term serviceability of your operation and take the opportunity to replace not only the server but the entire automation system with iTX. Why? Because iTX will play the existing archive of material from your current servers without the need for conversion and you get a powerful automation and playout system that is highly adaptable for changing market conditions in a more competitive environment.
Switching over from a legacy server-based system to a newly installed, adaptable iTX solution takes only a matter of weeks. What’s more, it is extremely cost-effective and gives you a versatile, user-friendly and feature-rich base for rapidly developing new broadcast services. You’ll be assured of never again having a server full of content in an unsupported format.
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