Quantel Won’t be at NAB but Innovation Continues
Story Highlights
By John Rice
Quantel won’t be exhibiting at NAB but the company continues to move forward developing products for some of the top trends at this year’s show, including 1080p and 3D stereoscopic production.
Trevor Francis, Quantel worldwide marketing manager for broadcast, says 1080p is the biggest technology Quantel is addressing. “Indirectly, it lays a path for stereoscopic 3D [which is] likely to be the next big ‘happening’ in sports TV,” he says.
A stereoscopic 3D server solution was shown by Quantel at IBC last fall. Other new applications include direct ingest from a 3ality camera recording in a standard sQ server running specialized 3D software; desktop viewing and simple edting; and direct 3D playout via a single BNC to a Hyundai 3D display.
The HD explosion will also continue, with Francis pointing to upcoming international events like the Winter Olympics, Asian Games, Rugby World Cup and others as HD drivers. “There are so many world events on the near horizon and none of them can meet their customers’ demands and remain competitive in SD,” says Francis.
Francis says today’s marketplace is looking for simplicity of operations and expandability of systems. “Many producers and other operators need total knowledge of their sports specialties and won’t tolerate technical systems that get in the way,” he explains, “As a result, Quantel’s fully-scalable single production environment is universally popular.”
He points to Quantel’s “fully open” systems and applications and systems from partner companies including Dixon Sports logging, SGL/FPD archiving systems and specialized sports playout controllers from IBIS and Hi-Tech as ways the company serves the needs of sports clients.
“Many sports operations are large businesses,” he explains. “The unlimited scalability of Quantel’s systems along with their transparent SD/HD handling across ingest, desktop, craft editing and playout are key attributes. The ability to improve productivity and increase turn-around speeds are paramount.”
