As the final moments of 2007 ticked away in New York City‘s Times Square, holiday cheer was not the only thing in the air. High above atop a Manhattan office building a Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver from Canon U.S.A., Inc. relayed live television images of the crowd of more than 1 million celebrants to a second Canobeam DT-150 HD at street level. From there the historic “bird‘s-eye view” HD video was transmitted to TV audiences around the world. This video, captured by an HD camera outfitted with a Canon DIGISUPER 100xs long-zoom HD lens, was sent wirelessly via free space optics by the Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver, which requires no frequency licensing or coordination. The Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver provides reliable bi-directional, uncompressed 1.5 Gbps transmission of embedded digital HD video, audio, and camera-control signals on a single HD-SDI stream with no delay. Bexel Broadcast Services supplied and integrated the Canon Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceivers used in the telecast.
“New Year‘s Eve in Times Square is a high-RF environment, both from all of the broadcast networks covering the event and the everyday crowding of the radio spectrum in Manhattan,” noted Tom Dickinson, General Manager of Bexel Corp. “It works a lot better to just be able to link the pair of Canobeam DT-150 HD units together and not have to worry about coordinating all the frequencies in Manhattan.”
“Canon‘s family of Canobeam products use a line-of-sight beam of infrared light to reliably transmit wide-bandwidth data or digital HD video and audio,” noted Gordon Tubbs, director, Broadcast and Communications division, Canon U.S.A., Inc. “The Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver sets up quickly, avoids the complications of RF and fiber, and can enable producers to establish camera positions that would otherwise be impossible. The picture quality provided is full, uncompressed HDTV, which producers in sports, special events, and even news are increasingly being called upon to deliver. We‘re proud that an industry leader such as Bexel, with whom Canon U.S.A.‘s Broadcast and Communications division has a long working relationship, will be making the Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver available to its clients in the television production industry.”
The Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver is the newest member of Canon‘s acclaimed series of point-to-point free space optics transceivers that use infrared light to bridge gaps in high-bandwidth transmission situations. The Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver can relay embedded HD-SDI and SD-SDI video from multiple cameras or other HD/SD video sources, along with embedded return video and audio to the camera operator, camera-control signals, and even robotic camera-control data. The DT-150 HD Canobeam has a range of up to one kilometer and - like all Canobeam DT-100 series products - features Canon‘s exclusive Auto Tracking feature to maintain beam alignment despite vibration due to wind, rain, or unsteady platforms. All Canobeam transceivers are protocol-independent (like fiber), and feature Small Form Pluggable (SFP) fiber-interface connections as well as Canobeam's DT-MNG-100 Management Board, which enables users to monitor the status of Canobeam transceivers via simple network management protocol (SNMP) or Telnet (for monitoring and setting). In addition, diagnostic logs can be stored in a PC via FTP (for log data transmission).
“We have been using the Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceiver at several events over the past few months - for college football, auto racing, and other sports - and they‘ve all gone very well,” Dickinson recalled. “Between the lack of frequency coordination and the ease of set-up, Canobeam is a simple choice.”
Following the Canobeam DT-150 HD video transceivers‘ outstanding performance on New Year‘s Eve, Bexel Broadcast Services used the same pair later that week at the BCS National Championship college football game in New Orleans. “Canobeam is a great product, and it has all the right features,” Dickinson noted. “It was the only product that could do the job at Times Square, and the client was very satisfied with the outcome. Everything went smoothly in one of the toughest production environments in the country. If it can make it there, it can make it anywhere!”
About Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Canon U.S.A., Inc. delivers consumer, business-to-business, and industrial imaging solutions. Its parent company, Canon Inc. (NYSE:CAJ), a top patent holder of technology, ranking third overall in the U.S. in 2007’, with global revenues of $34.9 billion, is listed as one of Fortune‘s Most Admired Companies in America and is on the 2007 BusinessWeek list of “Top 100 Brands.” To keep apprised of the latest news from Canon U.S.A., sign up for the Company's RSS news feed by visiting www.usa.canon.com/pressroom.
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’ IFI Patent Intelligence Press Release, January 2008