NAB 2017: Evertz Looking to the Future of IP, UHD, HDR and Virtualisation
Evertz Director of Product Marketing Mo Goyal
As broadcasters’ infrastructures evolve to accommodate IP, UHD and HDR, it stands to reason that vendors will necessarily to need to support workflows that – to various extents, and for various possible durations – are in a state of flux. Evertz indicated that it was up for the challenge in a press conference on Sunday (23 April) that touched on its latest developments in areas including SDN, playout, compression, remote production and more.
Commencing proceedings, Evertz Director of Product Marketing Mo Goyal predicted that at NAB 2017 as a whole “a key message from the majority of vendors would be [to discuss what they have got in terms of support for IP].” Inherent in this will be substantial discussion about cloud services and virtualisation as “we move down the path of IP”. How best to implement UHD and HDR will also be a major part of the continuing debate, as will “workflow optimisation, including how to leverage IP to make workflows much more competent.”
Evertz’ support for SMPTE 2110 and NMOS IS-04 was emphasised as Goyal ran through an impressive list of new product releases. As part of its family of Software Defined Video Networking (SDVN) IP-based solutions, Goyal introduced a host of 25GbE products, new evEDGE FPGA accelerated compute blades, and the 5700MSC-IP IP-based Grand Master Clock and Video Master Sync Generator.
Goyal also highlighted Evertz’ ability to support UHD and HDR production, and its status “as the only manufacturer that offers complete solutions in quad-link 3D-SDI, 12G-SDI, and IP, enabling UHD (with HDR) solutions in both new and existing facilities. In addition, the ability of the 7814UDX product family to achieve SDR to HDR conversion will be showcased throughout NAB 2017.
Whilst Goyal believes that “virtualisation will be more of a [hot] topic next year”, the company nonetheless has virtualised playout services to display this year. Evertz’ Overture RT LIVE VM is a cost-effective, scalable playout solution with deployment options including video appliances and private and public cloud VMs. Mediator-X, Evertz’ Media Asset Management (MAM) platform is also cloud enabled and provides media companies with a way of monetising content while maintaining lower operating costs.
In a far-reaching presentation, Goyal also touched upon the support that inSite – Evertz’s big data analytics engine – now delivers for cloud-based solutions and Amazon Web Services (AWS) environments.
With the economic and logistical reasons behind the concept of remote production now well-established, it is to be expected that vendors are now working to offer cost-effective RP solutions. Accordingly, at NAB 2017, Evertz is introducing two new media gateways for IP transport: the evRemote (evR) and 3606FR. These solutions, says the company, will allow remote production capability to be added to venues, rental spaces and OB facilities.
For customers with minimal ground infrastructure, Evertz is continuing to evolve its end-to-end RF solutions range, with the XPRF14 128×128 RF router. The feature-set includes full power, control, IO redundancy, a large touch display, an on-screen spectrum analyser, and gain monitoring.