JVC Professional Products Company

500 Valley Road
Suite 203
Wayne, NJ 07470
United States

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JVC LEADS INDUSTRY TO NEW LEVELS OF IP INTEGRATION SHIPS PROHD BROADCASTER SERVER, CAMERAS FOR ADVANCED LIVE HD STREAMING

Posted on Monday, April 7, 2014

WAYNE, NJ (April 7, 2014) – JVC Professional Products Company, a division of JVC Americas Corp., today announced it is shipping its new GY-HM890 and GY-HM850 ProHD shoulder-mount cameras, as well as its new BR-800 ProHD Broadcaster server powered by Zixi, which serves as the central component to JVC’s new Professional Streaming Services. The products are being demonstrated at the 2014 NAB Show (Booth C4314), which runs through April 10 in Las Vegas, Nev.

Introduced in February, the cameras feature a built-in Zixi engine that streams HD footage to a 4G LTE or Wi-Fi network for live field reports while recording HD to non-proprietary memory cards. The GY-HM850 and GY-HM890 feature Zixi's new Advanced Streaming Technology (AST) for content-aware error correction and bandwidth shaping. Both offer JVC's Streamconfidence real-time viewfinder feedback of LTE signal and streaming status.

With bitrates as low as 256 kbps and up to 3 Mbps, Zixi proprietary algorithms maximize bandwidth to ensure reliable transmission even under difficult conditions. Advanced content aware error correction compensates for up to 30 percent packet loss.

Both HD cameras capture 1020x1080 images with three, 1/3-inch CMOS sensors and an interchangeable Fujinon wide angle 20x autofocus zoom lens. Dual SDHC/SDXC card slots allow simultaneous, relay or backup recording of HD or SD footage in a variety of native file formats using MPEG-2 or H.264 compression. The dual codec system also allows one card to record full HD while the other records a smaller, Web friendly format. The GY-HM890 is also a versatile studio or multi-camera field production camera, with a 68-pin connection that accommodates JVC fiber or multi-core camera modules.

Available as a physical server or cloud-based solution, ProHD Broadcaster receives live video from a GY-HM850, GY-HM890 or updated GY-HM650 3.0 camcorders, transcodes the signal for a variety of delivery platforms, and provides reliable transmission of the signal. A built-in matrix switcher with unlimited I/O makes it easy to manage signals for distribution, and content can be directed to multiple destinations, including off-the-shelf HD-SDI decoders for live broadcast or almost any Web-based content provider.

Each camera fed into the Broadcaster is uniquely identified, and can be selected through a Web control interface by station personnel for live switching. As a result, Broadcaster can cost effectively manage multiple cameras at a single event without a multi-camera production truck, or even share camera feeds between stations in a station group. Broadcaster also accepts and automatically transcodes video from Android and iOS devices, so stations can take live video from a reporter at a news site who only has a cell phone or tablet to provide video of the scene.

The new equipment has already been purchased by several broadcasters. For example, Sinclair Broadcast Group, one of the largest U.S. television broadcasting companies in the United States, has ordered more than 70 GY-HM890s. The company plans to standardize on the camera across its ENG operations. Del Parks, senior vice president of engineering and operations, Sinclair Broadcast Group, said the live HD streaming is the “game-changing feature we’ve been waiting for in a full-sized camcorder.”

According to Dave Folsom, Raycom Media vice president and CTO, the station group plans to purchase ProHD Broadcasters for its 32 local news stations, which are standardizing on JVC GY-HM650 3.0 mobile news cameras for ENG. Once installed, the servers will manage live HD reports from more than 300 cameras in the field, and will enable Raycom to easily share news coverage between markets.