Complete Coverage:NAB Show 2013
In its annual NAB press conference, Snell executives
highlighted the changing TV landscape with consumers increasingly embracing the
viewing of content on IP-connected mobile devices and unveiled a number of new
technologies to help broadcasters address those changes.
These included products for multiplatform delivery of
content, the virtualization of facilities using cloud-based technologies, 4K
production techniques and hybrid infrastructures that were capable of dealing
with both IP infrastructures and existing broadcast inputs.
Neil Maycock, chief architect at Snell, noted that the
company was announcing more new products at this year's NAB Show than it had
for a number of years.
As part of the company's push to supply more multiscreen
products, he said that Snell added a TV Everywhere demonstration to its lineup
of featured solutions during the 2013 NAB Show.
The demo integrates Snell's Momentum media workflow
automation system, Morpheus play-out automation system, and ICE
channel-in-a-box solution. Working together, they show how content can be
ingested from a tablet device and sent to the cloud, where it can be accessed
for transcoding and play-out.
"With so many broadcast and media companies struggling to
deal with the economics of the TV Everywhere paradigm, Snell systems embrace
the utilization of cloud-based technologies to allow customers to realign their
expenditure with their business models," Maycock noted.
Maycock also stressed during the press conference that "4K
is here and is real. It is not like 3D. People are doing 4K now."
To help expand 4K production, Snell announced that it will
now offer 4K functionality at no additional charge in a range of products
including select routing switchers, fiber infrastructure, and the Kahuna 360
multiformat production switcher.
The company also unveiled its Snell On Demand platform, a
completely new media processing framework that marks the beginning of the
company's migration of its image-processing tools from dedicated hardware
platforms to software-based applications. These software applications can then
be access from cloud-based and virtualized infrastructures.
"Snell On Demand offers the broadcast and media
industry the opportunity to take a major step forward in service innovation and
workflow efficiency," noted Simon Derry, CEO at Snell in a statement. "With
Snell On Demand, Snell is putting the cost/benefit equation fairly and squarely
into the hands of the customer. It's very simple -- customers can choose
to buy as much or as little processing resource as fits their business model
secure in the knowledge that Snell products derived from the Snell On Demand
framework will give them the best possible quality results from world-leading
media processing tools."
