Tech Roundup

Over recent years, smartphone innovation has slowed. Developments from major vendors have trickled in, with refinement of functionality being brought to handsets, rather than leaps of innovation. Smartphones have no sign of disappearing; they remain one of the most widely used devices. However, there is certainly a lull in terms of market growth and buzz surrounding the products. What does this mean for broadcast media, given the voluntary rollout of the Next Gen broadcast TV standard and the push for FM chips in all smartphones, including those running on iOS systems? 

Creative services and media ventures company Big Block Capital Group used the Presidents' Day holiday to announced a strategic investment in Ripplebox, a live broadcasting and experiential marketing company. We've got the details.

Here's something of top interest to broadcast television executives planning to attend the 2018 NAB Show. ENCO is heading to Las Vegas with a wide array of new features in its award-winning MOM (Media Operations Manager) system. According to ENCO, these additions "deepen its integration with third-party solutions while addressing the accelerating transition to IP in today’s television operations."

A company known for its VoIP and video over IP technology has a new product it believes will help broadcast TV stations cut costs while providing more flexibility for remote IFB feeds. This product will get its grand debut at the 2018 NAB Show in Las Vegas in early April.

At the 2018 NAB Show April 8-13 in Las Vegas, Wazee Digital will highlight a SaaS solution that allows video content to be captured and made immediately available for global access. It will also show off its portal designed to help rights holders maximize the value of their premium content by connecting with customers who need video.

There's a provider of social listening and intelligence software that is now monitoring more than 2,000 TV and radio sources across the planet within its platform. The company offering the global tool is Digimind, which has a tool that now includes "enhanced listening and analytics capabilities to international offline sources."

A Swiss engineering pioneer has just been taken over by a Wuppertal, Germany-based company known for its design, manufacture, and distribution of real-time video, audio, data, and communications networks for broadcast, pro audio, event, sports, theater, and security applications.

After nearly a quarter century, Jim Roberts has decided to part ways with family — Mid-West Family Broadcasting, to be precise. Roberts, who has served as GM of the company's four-station South Bend, Ind., cluster, has accepted a key sales role at Futuri Media.

One of the world's top spoken word audio on-demand platforms has just made a major play for one of the globe's biggest streaming audio providers. In an announcement made this morning from its headquarters office just south of London's Tower Bridge in Southwark, Audioboom has offered to purchase Triton Digital for $185 million in an all-cash deal.

Video delivery and cable access virtualization company Harmonic has expanded its board of directors with the appointment of a strategic advisor to Roku. This individual is a former President/COO of Roku, and earlier in his career was a President/CEO of Avid Technology.

Comrex has released a new firmware version for Opal, the Massachusetts-based company's IP audio gateway. Opal firmware 1.1 includes native ​Safari support for macOS and iOS11.

Moving content from creation through distribution, while providing top-level monitoring and management, is a key desire of many media techies. Telestream hopes its media workflow orchestration, media streaming and delivery technologies are a top choice for 2018 NAB Show attendees.

The NAB is launching “Broadcast Innovation Stories,” a new campaign to highlight cutting-edge technological advancements in the broadcast television and radio industries. NAB’s innovation initiative, PILOT, will spearhead the campaign, which runs through April 2018.

Sonnet will showcase at the 2018 NAB Show its new eGFX Breakaway Box 650, a Thunderbolt 3 to eGPU PCI Express (PCIe) card expansion system designed and qualified specifically for large, power-hungry video graphics processing unit (GPU) cards, including the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64, Radeon Pro WX 9100, 9100 SSG and overclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 series-based cards.

For the past 18 years, Ken Wildgoose has led Ajax, Ontario-led ATX Networks, a provider of network infrastructure systems and commercial video solutions, as its President/CEO. He's just stepped down from the post, but will remain on the company's board of directors while becoming an advisor. Who is replacing Wildgoose? It's an individual who has long been associated with broadcast tower giant GatesAir