Orders Accelerate For Grass
Valley Group's Profile XP Media
Platform, Kalypso Video
Production Center
Nevada City, Calif., Sept. 20, 2000 — The Grass
Valley Group today reported momentum is accelerating
behind two of its flagship, next-generation products:
the Profile® XP Media Platform and the Kalypso™ Video
Production Center. The digital media leader, which
offers high-quality video solutions for the broadcast
industry and to the emerging interactive television,
Internet, digital cinema, and extreme retailing markets,
said it has received more than $70 million in orders for
its Profile line of products—more than 1,500
channels—since it started shipping the Profile XP Media
Platform nine months ago, including orders. Those
orders include commitments for the high-definition
version of the Profile XP Media Platform. Additionally,
the Grass Valley Group has received more than 100
orders over the past six months for the Kalypso Video
Production Center.
Grass Valley Group customers include
broadcast/Internet video leaders. In the Americas,
these companies include NBC; Newscorp/FOX;
MTV/Viacom; Turner Broadcasting; AOL/Time-Warner
(Warner Brothers Television); Boston-based WGBH-TV,
the leading content creator for the United States'
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) station network; ABC
affiliate KABC in Los Angeles, Calif., NEP Supershooters
and Mountain Mobile, (both US mobile truck
companies); Cosmos Broadcasting; and Galaxy Latin
America LLC (GLA), the exclusive provider of DIRECTV
to 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In
Europe and the Middle East, they include the BBC,
Euromedia, EuroHits, HTV-Wales, Viasat, and Emirates
Media/Abu Dhabi TV. In the Pacific Rim, they include
the Australian Broadcast Corporation, Start TV and
New Dehli TV of India, CCTV (China Central TV), and
the E-Channel in Korea.
Other digicasting customers include Lucent
Technologies, Media DVX (digital commercial delivery),
and the Enterprise Broadcasting Corporation (a Silicon
Valley-based company which has developed the
platform for a nationwide network of luxury,
high-definition theaters broadcasting unique
commercial programming in upscale malls around the
United States).
The Grass Valley Group's next-generation products are
part of the company's Media Without Bounds™
technology and solutions initiative to optimize video
and other content creator's digital distribution
strategies. This initiative acknowledges the emergence
of Digicasters—professional content creators who want
to broadly re-purpose their high-value content over a
variety of digital distribution media.
"The most important thing we can do for our
Digicasting™ customers is to continue our aggressive
rate of research and development investment, including
the acquisition of complementary technologies and
joint technology partnership, to accelerate the delivery
of innovative, flexible, affordable products for
high-quality video," said Tim Thorsteinson, president of
the Grass Valley Group. Currently, the company is
spending nearly 18 percent of revenue on research and
development for new products. "We are extremely
proud of the caliber of our customers, and look forward
to providing them the best in quality video technology
and support."
With more broadcast content stored on it than any
other server, the Profile XP Media Platform is the
industry's most open solution, supporting both the
high-quality standards required for broadcast television
and low-resolution required for the Internet, as well as
MPEG, DVCPRO, HD and MPEG Transport Streams
(MTS) formats. It is also extensible to new applications
inside and outside a broadcast facility including hard
news production, interactive television, digital cinema,
and the Internet.
"In the not too distant future, that means when you're
watching high-quality video on television, your
computer, in the mall, or at the movie theater, you will
be watching the Grass Valley Group's Profile line," said
Thorsteinson.
As the hub of a teleproduction environment, the
Kalypso Video Production Center family combines
industry-leading switching and powerful mix/effects
(M/E) capabilities with an open, networked
architecture that offers a precedent-setting degree of
operational integration.
"Since the introduction of the Kalypso, we've rolled out
three significant releases of advanced hardware and
software enhancements, answering the demand for
more production value, more control, and offering the
means to lower costs in applications such as
multilingual and multi-client productions," said
thorsteinson. "Coupled with a huge 80x46 internal
routing system, Kalypso is the most robust tool for live
productions available on the market today |
