Omnitek's Ultra TQ Takes Centre Stage at IBC

Although Amsterdam was a bit wet for IBC's fiftieth year, the weather did not dampen the enthusiasm of the visitors to the show.

This year the numbers felt down on last year, but the visitors seemed to be more focussed on finding solutions for the challenges that the industry is facing.

There appears to be an acceptance that the industry needs both IP and copper solutions and one does not necessarily preclude the other. Many equipment manufacturers are supporting both, thus allowing the end user to decide which is the best approach for their application or installation. The sensible approach to providing IP support is to fit cages as well as BNCs on equipment, to harness the power and flexibility of the SFP which is going through its own technological revolution and supporting the complexities of SMPTE 2110 or 2022-6 in a single device.

On the Omnitek stand in Hall 10, the Ultra family of products was on show running mature software with its familiar, easy to use interface. Of particular interest to broadcasters was the Ultra TQ making its European debut and demonstrating SMPTE 2110 and 2022-6 connectivity.

The Ultra TQ has been developed specifically for broadcasters who want to perform program content quality control and monitoring regardless of how the content arrives. The flexibility of the Ultra TQ hardware platform means that it is equally at home in a SDI or IP environment and provides support up to 3G as standard with an upgrade path to UHD if it is required in the future.

Omnitek operates a flexible upgrade process to accommodate changing industry needs and workflows and allows customers to migrate the functionality of their existing Ultra product to any other variant. This flexibility allows customers to invest in equipment now, knowing that their investment was a sound one, even when the technological goal posts keep moving.

The Ultra TQ builds on the success of the Ultra platform and inherits functionality from the highly successful Ultra 4K Tool Box and the Ultra XR products to provide a comprehensive set of tools to support broadcasters with HDR / WCG production and connectivity challenges.

Ultra TQ's analyser instruments include picture, waveform monitor, vectorscope, gamut meters, full audio monitoring and loudness measurement, video timing, video / audio status monitoring, event logging and closed caption logging as standard. These can monitor either one of the SDI inputs or the SMPTE 2110 SFP input. This makes the Ultra TQ ideal for a mixed SDI / IP environment where you just want to look at the content and not design the IT infrastructure.

The Picture monitor provides a high-quality display with closed captions overlay, safe area cages and O-ZoneTM display for HDR and SDR production.

The Waveform monitor can display YCbCr or YRGB and provides full horizontal & vertical zoom of single, multiple or all line displays. Analysis of full frame video or Region of Interest can be made.

Audio Meters displays 16 audio channels with industry standard ballistics and scales. The Loudness Meter supports EBU RP 128, ITU-R BS.1770-1, 2, 3, ATSC A/85, ARIB TR-B32 and OP-59 to allow program or continual loudness logging.

Ultra TQ provides logging of all physical and functional parameters of the video signal against timecode, ideal for program QC and Compliance.

The integrated line test pattern generator allows the generation of 38 line-patterns. This can be upgraded to a full test pattern generator with a range of zone plates and test sequences.

Physical layer analysis and advanced physical layer analysis are available as options for use anywhere signal integrity needs to be checked.

Also on show were Omnitek's highly successful Ultra 4K Tool Box and Ultra XR which have been adopted by hundreds of manufacturers and post production facilities around the world. Now with version 3.4 software and providing improved support for HLG, S-Log and many other HDR work flows.

Omnitek's Design Services arm saw a lot of interest as increasingly broadcast equipment manufacturers seek to either out-source areas of their development or need to speed up their time to market by using Omnitek's video designs and experience.

As a Design Services provider and T&M product manufacturer, Omnitek are ideally suited to help others develop their own products. We have built up expertise over many years and understand the stages, processes and challenges that are faced when getting products to market on time. We have expertise in-house, and industry contacts, to be able to find solutions to problems in circuit design, PCB layout, manufacturing, testing, compliance and other areas.

Article by Alan Wheable FISTC, MITOL – Communications Manager at Omnitek.

Image: Omnitek at IBC Show 2017.

www.omnitek.tv

This article is also available to read in the October edition of Broadcast Film & Video here, page 18.

(JP)