IBC 2010: Thomson Grass Valley To Unveil Latest Transmission, Headend Products

Thomson Grass Valley will arrive in Amsterdam for IBC 2010 with a lineup of new products and upgrades from its transmission and headend units. These units were not included in Francisco Partners’ recent binding offer to Technicolor concerning the Grass Valley broadcast unit, and the businesses plan to operate individually going forward.

Transmission Products

The Elite 1000 GreenPower Transmitter Line (UHF transmitters) feature 50 V LDMOS technology and boasts an output power of up to 9.6 kW DVB per unit with an energy consumption savings of up to 15% over the previous Elite transmitter series. Utilizing Thomson real-time Digital Adaptive Precorrection (DAP), the Elite 1000 GreenPower line provides leading-edge DTV transmission efficiency, optimized output power, solid signal quality, and high redundancy.

The DVB-T2 Exciter was already on-air in the U.K. for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the new DVB-T2 Exciter is for analog broadcasters switching directly to DVB-T2, or for digital providers wanting to upgrade to DVB-T2 for greater bandwidth efficiency.

DRM+ Band III Broadcasting System is the industry’s first complete solution for DRM radio transmission in Band III, including a program content management system, the DRM+ modulator, and an RF amplifier for the chosen frequency band. The system incorporates Thomson’s GreenPower technology for energy efficiency and advanced modulation technology.

DRM Content Server With Diveemo Data Service is an integrated, all-in-one content server and transmission control system for DRM radio transmission, complete with the Diveemo application for managing the transmission of extra non-audio content (images, text, maps, small-scale video, and advertising).

DRM Content Server

Headend Products

Thomson Grass Valley has completed several enhancements to the ViBE Video Compression Range.

The ViBE EM3000 HD encoder now features 3D functionalities and also boasts an additional general compression performance gain of 15%. The upgraded ViBE video compression range is already on-air broadcasting pan-European sports content.

VIBE Encoder

The ViBE EM2000 Quad encoder now offers exemplary simultaneous MPEG-2/4 SD encoding on four channels. The ViBE EM2000 Quad allows broadcasters to reduce their compression system footprint dramatically.

ViBE EM1000/EM2000 encoders now support MPEG-2/4 compressed input, providing the ability to re-encode signals received on ASI or IP. With this option, the EM1000/2000 becomes a versatile weapon, giving broadcasters the ability to reduce infrastructure costs on the path to a full IP architecture, with no compromise on picture quality. Built-in DVB subtitle transcoding capabilities are also now offered in the ViBE EM1000/EM2000 encoders. This new DVB subtitle software license, based on Cavena technology, simplifies the management of DVB subtitles redundancy and saves space by avoiding external subtitling equipment.

The NetProcessor 9030/40 multiplexer is an edge-processing solution for content regionalization. The new DVB-T2-ready NetProcessor 9030/40 offers the power of several multiplexers in one unit, thus allowing operators to reduce CAPEX and OPEX. The flexible NetProcessor 9030/40 is scalable to fit any requirement with features that include a wide range of interfaces, full CAS support, embedded SFN or DVB-T2 gateway, and built-in program insertion capability.