Tech Roundup

Tired of having to switch streaming audio platforms in order to listen to your favorite iHeartRadio stations and Alpha Media stations via a smartphone, laptop, or tablet? That's no longer a problem. Effective today, all of Alpha's 200-plus stations are available to iHeartRadio users.

Don't think for a minute that the potential growth in in-home listening from Smart Speakers from makers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home are only for big-city broadcasters? There's gold in them thar hills, valleys and villages for radio broadcasters, and Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker is about to let the nation know all about it.

Emmis subsidiary TagStation LLC on Tuesday revealed that its NextRadio app is now available in the nation of South Korea. And, it's not a streaming audio version that's being touted. Rather, this app -- like that available to Android-powered smartphones in the U.S. -- allows listeners to tune in live-and-local FM radio stations over their phones.

Could everyday household Smart Speakers be the new home AM/FM radio? Why not? More listeners are making user-friendly personal smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home their first choice for audio. Can the industry capitalize on this to expand radio's reach? The answers will come at Forecast 2018 on Nov. 15 in New York.

Considering a 4K UHD HCAM wireless camera system? Perhaps xG Technology's Vislink, which works with broadcast industry clients, has something worth investing in. British firm Broadcast RF Ltd. believes so strongly in Vislink that it's placed an order worth $400,000 for 10 HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) 4K UHD HCAM wireless camera systems.

For 33 years, this individual led the engineering efforts of all Greater Media stations. With the company's sale to Beasley Broadcast Group, it was time for a change ... or retirement. The former was selected, and the result is the rebranding of an engineering consultancy that directly acknowledges his arrival.

R&S PRISMON, the software-based monitoring and multi-viewer solution from Munich-based Rohde & Schwarz, has passed all Dolby Laboratories certification tests. It's a big win for R&S, as Dolby is a leading manufacturer of audio codecs.

Belar Electronics has unveiled its latest innovations for analog and digital AM modulation, as the RF monitoring firm has completed its updates for its legacy AMMA-2. The company says this allows for more efficient operation within HD Radio and MDCL systems.

A leading provider of drone services for "enterprise customers" has refined the way it wishes to work with the entire arts and entertainment industry -- including broadcast media companies. With that, Measure has launched Measure Media (M2), which the company calls "the first nationwide network of full-time drone pilots specializing in meeting the airborne storytelling needs of both small screen and big screen projects."

It's been a little more than three months since Bruce Swail has been at the helm of GatesAir, one of the world's leading transmitter vendors, working closely with radio and television broadcasters on all-things focused on bringing a clean, quality signal to consumers. In that time, it is fair to say that Swail has jumped head-first into an industry provider serving an industry at the cusp of massive change. In this exclusive interview with RBR+TVBR's WEEKLY TECH UPDATE, Swail gives us a glimpse into what's tops in his world, and what the radio and TV industry's C-Suite should keep their eyes on in 2018.

Roland Professional A/V last week took the opportunity to appear at NAB Show New York to introduce the latest addition to Roland’s line of video production solutions. The V-60HD is being marketed for live event production and broadcast, recording and streaming media players.

Mark Thursday at 2pm Pacific on your calendar if you or a colleague plan to attend the SMPTE 2017 Technical Conference in Los Angeles. That's when Triveni Digital's Mark Coral, SVP of Emergent Technology Development, will present his latest findings on the post-FCC auction repack process and broadcast TV needs associated with the transition to next-gen broadcast technology.

The company in northeast Ohio formerly known as Massillon Cable TV has launched a next-gen IPTV service using the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform developed by Espial.

If you're a viewer of the long-running series Shark Tank, you'll know that the question, "Do you have a patent?" is a very important one for investors, and for eventual clients using the unique product. For ENCO Systems, the answer is "yes" with respect to a patent that specifically applies to providing automated captioning by using speech-to-text.

Triveni Digital is ready to unveil a new Service-Level Agreement (SLA) verification feature for its StreamScope RM-50 monitoring system and will do so this week at NAB Show New York. The StreamScope RM-50 remote transport stream monitor is designed to allow broadcasters participating in a channel-sharing agreement to successfully verify SLAs.