Sony's complete picture(it's still fuzzy)...............
nab.org
Sony Charts Future Course
Mitsuru Ohki Says Partnerships with Internet Players Will Help Broadcasters "Complete the Picture."
by Robert Kapler, TV TECHNOLOGY
Sony is preparing for the coming broadband era with a full-service networking strategy based upon partnerships with key players in Internet-relatEd markets, said Mitsuru Ohki, a high-ranking Sony executive, in an interview with NAB Daily.
Ohki, corporate senior vice president and deputy president of Sony's Communication System Solutions Network Co. (CNSC), said that this year's Sony NAB theme, "Complete the Picture," reflects a strategy to partner with customers to provide end-to-end solutions to broadcasters.
Meanwhile, he said, the company continues to push 24p and MPEG as global standards in the high-definition production and post production realms.
TAKING THE INITIATIVE
Ohki pointed out that in the three years that Sony has been engaged in the MPEG World initiative, it has signed 58 company partners, many of whom offer new technologies to ease the MPEG transition.
"We recognized that it would be very difficult for one company to do everything," Ohki said. "So we [decided to] exchange technology to make the MPEG World a reality."
Joining Ohki in the breakfast interview, which took place on Sunday, just hours before a corporate press conference, was Utako Higuchi, marketing communications manager, Business Planning Department, Broadcast & Professional Co.; and Ed Grebow, president of Sony Broadcast and Professional Co.
While Sony's consumer company has been a stellar player in the corporate constellation thanks largely to PlayStation, the broadcast division has undergone a bit of a reassessment.
That led to a restructuring and new direction that Grebow says reflects a forward-thinking philosophy that has little to do with ongoing struggles for market share with competitors such as Panasonic, whose DVCPro line goes head-to-head with Sony's DVCAM in digital broadcast markets.
"Ohki-san's direction for us really is not to focus so much on Panasonic and our traditional competitors, but to focus more on networking services and Internet-based services," Grebow said. "All of a sudden we are competing with companies that we never competed with before. And our strategy is very much to focus worldwide on those networked Internet products."
OhkI added: "Rather than think about our competitors, it is much moRe important to [learn] how to meet the customer's demand or customer direction. Particularly this year as we switch to the broadband era."
DEVELOPMENT ALLIES
Alliances with such players as Quantel, Microcast and Omneon are designed to position Sony as a major broadband networking provider.
But Ohki said part of the company's overall strategy is based simply on customer need for new technologies. For example, he said, the edit-friendly IMX MPEG format responds to the need for broadcasters to work in MPEG "from acquisition to broadcast transmission. It's a very simple operation based on MPEG."
Echoing Ohki, Grebow said the "tremendous response" to the MPEG VTR is based on a belief that it is a "future-proof format. While SX was Sony's first MPEG product," Ohki said, "IMX provides an end-to-end solution for broadcasters who want to stay in MPEG."
IMX is backward-compatible with any of the half-inch legacy products and DVCAM.
With more and more digital content being created on a global scale, Sony is pushing harder into asset management archiving markets, Higuchi said, especially with its Petasite mass storage data library and its DTF drives.
Last year, Sony announced a major Petasite sale to CNN. This year, U.S. Armed Forces Radio and Television is paying $17 million for a DMS-8400 Petasite mass storage data library and MAV-70 video servers. And, as part of an alliance to market turnkey digital asset management services to filmmakers and broadcasters, Sony sold WAM!NET a PetaSite and DTF drives.
Recently, Sony allied with Discreet to introduce a next-generation, large-capacity DTF drive called DTF-2, which incorporates Fibre-Channel connectivity for a variety of mission-critical backup, SAN and archiving applications.
In the HD market, Ohki said that Panavision's $18 million purchase of 100 HDW-F900 camcorders with 24p digital production is an indication that 24p/24 frame is being embraced for digital cinematography.
"The induStry also has a strong interest in our 24p HD format. George LucAs and a number of other directors have expressed an interest in using HD for filming."
And to help more broadcasters - and consumers - enjoy the benefits of HD, the company has announced dramatic price drops in its HDCam line and television sets.
Sony is looking to ramp up profitability in its broadcast lines worldwide, and realistically expects a 6 percent to 9 percent increase in sales this year.
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