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Snell & Wilcox BroadcastAsia 2008 Product Preview

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Company Overview

Founded in 1973, Snell & Wilcox designs and manufactures high-quality image processing, conversion, switching, and compression products for the professional film and television markets. In 2008, Snell & Wilcox celebrates 35 years of removing the barriers created by a multitude of global video standards and formats while setting the gold standard for video quality. Today these world-renowned capabilities are addressing the urgent need for broadcasters to succeed in a turbulent market � by enabling transitions to SD and HDTV broadcasting that uphold the highest standards of quality, while never losing sight of the bottom line.

Snell & Wilcox at BroadcastAsia 2008

Snell & Wilcox will showcase a host of enhanced solutions for live production, quality control, monitoring, and conversion. With these sophisticated solutions, media owners can deliver high-quality content that meets the varied demands of a rapidly evolving broadcast market.

Enhanced Kahuna SD/HD Multiformat Production Switcher and IMPAKT DVEs
The multiple-award-winning Kahuna SD/HD multiformat production switcher is now enhanced with powerful new DVE capabilities, including a first-of-its-kind "Fluid Effects" capability that allows operators to wrap live video around animated models for a highly sophisticated look in live production. Rather than render video and the 3-D model on a separate system, Kahuna operators can select any real-time source and apply it to any 3-D model that has been preloaded onto the switcher.

IMPAKT DVE Models Version 4 brings new film effects, global lighting, flag waves, and window blind effects to the IMPAKT 3-D DVE option for Kahuna, giving operators more than 30 film effects and a rich portfolio of dynamic effects models. Additional switcher enhancements include the quadrupling of the Kahuna's clip stores, improved third-party integration capabilities through Kahuna Manager, VDCP control interfacing, and a series of new auxiliary panels that provide highly visible source selection of three levels of mnemonics.

QC Station Automated Monitoring and Quality Assurance System
Snell & Wilcox will introduce the new QC Station, an automated quality assurance system that leverages the intuitive algorithms of the company's advanced Hyperion content monitoring technology to provide alarms and on-screen display of faults or anomalies in audio, video, and metadata. A stand-alone system that can be incorporated easily into any type of system infrastructure, QC Station significantly reduces the burden of quality assurance in ingest and playout applications and streamlines distributed operations by enabling remote monitoring from a centralized location.

QC Station uses proven algorithms to detect even subtle errors in video, multiple channels of audio, and metadata. Quality control operators can adjust the system's alarm function according to level, specific area of the screen, and type of content and station branding. QC Station provides alarms and logs content faults to provide a record of content quality and, in turn, support service-level agreements. The monitoring system is capable of frame-accurate measurement and recording of commercial content for the purpose of verification. It also uses metadata to detect program identity and parental guidance ratings. As a result, operators can be confident that the right content is airing properly on the right channel.

Expanded Range of Intelligent Infrastructure Products
Infrastructure products are key to a smooth transition to digital broadcasting, and with Snell & Wilcox IQ Modular, broadcasters can take control of this transition while putting in place IT awareness for the next generation of workflow technology. With more than 400 intelligent component building blocks, IQ Modular gives customers the flexibility to construct any type of broadcasting facility. The new RollCall Control Applet V2.1 includes local and remote control capability with improved responsiveness of system-wide control to ease operational workflows. A full module backup and restore facility helps to maximize operational uptime benefits.

Quasar Ph.C Motion Compensated HD Upconverter
The Quasar Ph.C motion compensated upconverter combines four Emmy^�® Award-winning Snell & Wilcox technologies in its single, compact 1-RU package to deliver HDTV outputs with twice the resolution of competitive products that use conventional linear adaptive techniques. New for 2008 are dramatically improved upconversion and cut-detection algorithms that enhance performance on a wide variety of complex images. These enhancements enable Quasar Ph.C to deliver stunningly sharp upconverted images from all types of inputs, including those with fast motion, fine detail, or both.

Alchemist Ph.C � HD Standards Converter
The Snell & Wilcox Alchemist Ph.C � HD motion-compensated frame-rate standards converter, acknowledged worldwide as the "gold standard" in conversion performance, now offers simultaneous SD and HD conversion in its compact 3-RU mainframe. This one-box approach delivers HD frame-rate conversion between 50-Hz and 60-Hz HD standards for both 1080i and 720p formats, as well as SD frame-rate conversion between 50-Hz and 60-Hz material. The Alchemist Ph.C � HD also provides motion compensated HDTV upconversion, downconversion, and crossconversion, making it the most comprehensive conversion solution available in the market.

Alchemist Ph.C â�� HD now provides co-timed simultaneous SD/HD outputs, each with independent aspect ratio and color space conversion â�� a huge benefit for broadcasters wanting to simulcast in both SD and HD. Also new to the system is a seamless timecode conversion option that drastically improves operational efficiency by eliminating the costly and time-consuming use of additional equipment and manual re-editing of timecode information on videotapes. Full support for Dolby^�® E audio eliminates the need for outboard Dolby decoders and encoders, reducing space, setup, and configuration requirements in replication and dubbing operations.

Snell & Wilcox, Putting Pictures to Work, Kahuna, Fluid Effects, IMPAKT, Quasar Ph.C, Alchemist Ph.C � HD, QC Station, IQ Modular, Hyperion, and RollCall are all trademarks of the Snell & Wilcox Group. All other trademarks mentioned herein are acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.