Thomson Grass Valley Delivers On Router, Control System Interoperability Pledge
(International Broadcasting Convention 2002 – Booth 8.151) Amsterdam, 12 September 2002 — Making good on its pledge to quickly integrate its newly expanded router and control system product lines, Thomson Grass Valley is demonstrating interoperability between its Thomson Grass Valley Trinix™ routing switcher family and its Encore™ facility control system and Series 7000 control system at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC).
It was in March of 2002 that Thomson acquired the product lines of the Grass Valley Group—and 30 days later at NAB 2002 when company officials publicly pledged to rapidly drive compatibility between their combined routing and control system products. This week's demonstrations at IBC 2002 come less than six months after engineering teams first sat down to lay out an integration strategy.
"Our message to customers—and competitors—is that we are a nimble, focused, and highly disciplined equipment supplier," said Marc Valentin, vice president of the Thomson Grass Valley business. "This week's announcement of Trinix, Encore, and Series 7000 systems integration are indicative of the speed with which we will combine the rest of our product lines."
About the Products
Supporting up to 512x512 configurations in a 32 RU chassis, the Thomson Grass Valley Trinix routing switcher family addresses a critical need facing facilities that are increasingly routing more content to more places—the ability to deploy high-capacity, small-footprint systems that can handle standard- or high-definition (SD or HD) signals, or a combination of the two, without sacrificing performance, short changing feature sets, increasing heat dissipation unacceptably, or degrading system availability.
The Trinix family handles SMPTE standard digital video signals from 3 Mb/s to 1.486 Gb/s. Users can assign any 32x32 set of inputs and outputs to support either SD or HD signals. The Trinix system also employs an N+1 fan system in which all fans work together to provide efficient, redundant cooling and a passive rear-panel design that allows for simple front-serviceable upgrades by hot-swapping modules—all without taking the system offline. It also offers low-power consumption for power-sensitive installations and available redundant, load-sharing power supplies.
The Thomson Grass Valley Encore system is an open, scaleable platform for full router and facility control. Featuring tight integration with automation systems, third-party routers, and other equipment, the Encore system makes it easy to consolidate media assets under a single, unified control system. It modular design lets broadcasters and other high-quality content creators select just the level of control they need. At its most basic level, the Encore system can configure the crosspoints of a single routing matrix—and easily expand that control up to 4096x4096. Users can also add tally and machine control via Ethernet, serial, or GPI interfaces. And a selection of hardware and PC software control panels that work across the room or across the country via IP LAN/WAN connections offers centralized or distributed management of all devices under Encore system control.
The Thomson Grass Valley Series 7000 control system provides responsive and predictable frame-accurate switching with up to 32 levels of control. Field-proven in the most demanding facilities in the world, in installations of up to 1024x1024 crosspoints, it features extensive redundancy options to minimize down time, powerful tie line management for transparent signal routing between matrices, and virtual matrix mapping to maximize crosspoint utilization.
About Thomson
With sales of 10.5 billion Euros (U.S. $ 9.3 billion) in 2001 and 73,000 employees in more than 30 countries, Thomson (Euronext: 18453) (NYSE: TMS), provides a wide range of video (and enabling) technologies, systems, finished products and services to consumers and professionals in the entertainment and media industries. To advance and enable the digital media transition, Thomson has five principal activities: Digital Media Solutions, Displays and Components, Consumer Products, Patents and Licensing and New Media Services. The company distributes its products and services under the THOMSON, RCA and TECHNICOLOR brand names. For more information: www.thomson-multimedia.com.
A business within Thomson Digital Media Solutions, Thomson Grass Valley delivers open, integrated digital products that work together along the entire digital video chain to support a variety of workflows, from content capture and acquisition through production, post production, and transmission. With a proven track record in broadcast, including 17 Emmy® and multiple industry awards, it offers an award-winning, robust product portfolio that touches more high-quality content than any other; product and systems expertise that has yielded hundreds of patents and a number of industry standards; and worldwide software engineering expertise and customer support teams that are second to none.
For information about Thomson Grass Valley products please visit www.thomsongrassvalley.com.
Grass Valley Group, 400 Providence Mine Road, Nevada City, CA 95959. Tel: 888-526-8554 ; Fax: 503-627-5224.