- FOR-A and Aveco: the tech alliance
- Telos Alliance: the new virtual intercom platform app
- American Airlines Center installs Lawo IP system
Maria: FOR-A and Aveco will work together to provide solutions for video production, automation, and asset management. FOR-A HVS series production switchers and Insight video servers in class X graphics systems are now tightly integrated with Aveco Astra studio production automation and Gemini MAM systems. So Philip, what does this mean for the industry?
Philip: I find it interesting to see that a lot of Davids are getting together to fight Goliaths. Big companies like Ross that have their Overdrive systems, MAM, Playout, and switchers sort of do it all but smaller companies are more specialized. They focus on specialized technologies but we are now seeing them integrate and I believe part of this is due to the fact that we are now moving on to a more cut-based hardware platform and people are used to it and they are using APIs for this integration. Also, the customers are demanding better integration and they’ve just taken it to the next level. For this particular group, I don’t think it’s quite a co-opetition which is good. I think they really are a partnership aiming to grow and move forward and there’s always an issue with companies that have some overlapping products and it becomes a little bit of co-opetition, but I think it’s good for the industry to see smaller companies working together to provide end-to-end solutions. At the very least, it starts to provide more choices for entry-level organizations or smaller organizations without a large budget.
Maria: Mary what do you think?
Mary: I agree with Philip, you know it’s interesting that we are starting to see a lot of these companies who have always –especially in audio– been competitive with each other, finally getting together to cooperate. The consumer should have things like that because they usually come up with solutions that are kind of a compromise on a lot of different technology.
Maria: Now moving on to Telos Alliance. Telos Alliance announced the launch of the Telos Infinity VIP app which is now available for download from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The Infinity VIP app is here to expand infinity customers’ experience with Telos’s award-winning virtual intercom platform. Mary, I’d like to know what you think about this.
Mary: I was playing around with it over the weekend and it’s very cool. What it does is, to put it simply and with no offense to Telos, it’s like an intercom system in your pocket. You can remotely connect to your intercom system. I think it’s a huge leap forward, it’s very useful to smaller stations because they don’t necessarily need a large intercom system but as we start to see more remote production and more people contributing from remote places, this would prove very helpful, not just for broadcasters but also for houses of worship, and corporate settings. It makes it very easy to connect and I love it because they are also using an OPUS Codec so you’ve got high-quality audio with a very low delay.
Maria: Philip, what are your thoughts on it?
Philip: Similarly, I think it’s great that you’ve got a light-weight software-based application that rides on your phone, whether android or IOS, and intercom is one of the unsung heroes in remote production because you have to be able to talk to people separate from the broadcast audio so, I think it’s a great innovation and I’m hoping that others will move in that direction.
Mary: I think they will because interestingly, Telos came up with the whole idea of breaking the matrix with infinity and that was incredibly innovative at that time but now you’d start to see the other intercom companies realizing that they can also do something similar. So, it’s one company pushing the whole industry while making it better for the broadcasters.
Maria: American Airlines Center is one of the busiest Arenas in North America invested in Lawo mc²56 MkIII mixing console with redundant A__UHD Cores providing 512 DSPs for the front-of-house and monitor mixes. They have features that are unique to Lawo, including the various GPI/O options and remote VNC access to other machines. So, Mary, can you tell me about this and its capabilities?
Mary: I think it’s very smart that Lawo has gotten into this area. There’s always the need to move audio from one place to the other outside of broadcasting so this is perfect for that. Especially in big arenas that need to have the same audio equipment that broadcasters use and Lawo has gotten into this space. It is easy to use and it’s a very powerful console so it allows them very quickly to switch signals and to make things -from an audio point of view- a lot easier and you can have a lot more audio sources which just keeps anyone entertained in an arena like that. So bravo to the audio and the American Airlines Center for using this.
Maria: That’s all the time we have. Many thanks to our experts Philip Grossman and Mary Seidler and don’t forget to comment on the news that we’ve discussed. See you next Monday at the same time.
Hosts Philip Grossman, Mary Ann Seidler, Maria Kholodova.
The live broadcast will take place on February 27, 2023. Production — TKT1957 LLC, Georgia
The program can be watched every Monday at 19:00 UTC+4 by clicking on any of these links:
