NAB PREVIEW: Miranda improves Kaleido

Sports production truck vendors and control room personnel looking for new options in multi-image display processors will want to check out the latest version of Miranda s Kaleido multi-image display processor at NAB.

The company has added new features that will make it easier for operators to trouble shoot problems. Advanced video and audio probing including signal black, freeze and luminance too high, audio presence, overload, mono and out-of-phase alarms are all standard.

Multi-image displays provide a chance to check the signal quality coming into the display instead of requiring a separate system, says Neil Sharpe, Miranda VP, product marketing. That makes signal management easier and also more cost effective.

The alarms can be reported on-screen or via SNMP to other monitoring devices such as Miranda s iControl for logging and strategic monitoring views. When combined with the Miranda Allegro RGB real-time MPEG-4 streaming encoder 10-channel remote monitoring and production is possible over IP.

Other monitoring features include decoding Dolby Metadata information, such as channel line-up and the dialog normalization value for on-screen display. In addition, advanced new aspect-ratio control features include on-screen reporting of the Advanced Format Descriptor (AFD), with automatic video window aspect-ratio reconfiguration from the AFD information. The goal is to have a consistent output so that programmers don t end up with the postage-stamp effect [of a 4:3 letterboxed image floating in a 16:9 HD screen], says Sharpe.

Another product of interest to sports networks is Imagestore Intuition, a channel branding graphics processor that improves the output of multi-level graphics over moving backgrounds.

It has improved shadow treatment for text and can play longer video clips via automation, says Sharpe. It can also stream out multiple clips so users can see previews of what clips are coming up.

Finally, look for XVP-811i HD/SD, an up/down/crossconverter added to the XVP HD interface family. Along with the AFD functionality it also has audio features, including downmixing 5.1 Surround Sound to stereo left and right channels for easy monitoring of downconverted HD signals. The XVP family comprises a range of HD/SD interfaces that can be easily upgraded in the field to the full XVP-811i specification, thereby simplifying maintenance and minimizing infrastructure costs.