Cobalt Digital SCTE 104 Insertion and Processing Options Win NewBay Media’s Best of Show Award
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Cobalt Digital today announced that its SCTE 104 digital program insertion and processing options for the company’s openGear® cards and BBG-1000 Series stand-alone processors received a NewBay Media Best of Show Award at IBC2016. +SCTE104-FAST (frame-accurate SCTE trigger), which provides functionality available only from Cobalt, enables customers to tie timestamped information from automation systems to the time code information contained in the baseband SDI. +SCTE104, the companion option to +SCTE104-FAST, lets customers automatically generate and insert widely used SCTE 104 messages into baseband SDI.
Presented by TVBEurope, the NewBay Best of Show Awards honor innovation and outstanding product development. An independent panel of judges examined each nominated product throughout the course of the show according to a wide range of criteria, including ease of use/maintenance, performance against the category standard, richness/relevance of the feature set, value/ROI, versatility, anticipated reliability, and originality. Winners received an award for display and will be featured in the upcoming Best of Show Digital Edition.
Cobalt’s unique +SCTE104-FAST option provides frame-accurate insertion for deterministic results when the program signal is used in sophisticated downstream video-on-demand (VOD) and commercial insertion systems. This precise insertion of pertinent data greatly enhances the performance and accuracy of VOD and server-based commercial-replacement systems. Customers can use +SCTE104-FAST to fully author custom messages and send them to the Cobalt processor via easy-to-read XML-formatted files. The Cobalt processor uses the timestamp data from those files to compare against incoming ANC timecode or UTC time derived from an NTP reference.
Meanwhile, with +SCTE104, customers can generate and insert five of the most widely used SCTE 104 messages into baseband SDI as triggered by automation via GPI, SNMP, or JSON using Cobalt’s popular Reflex protocol. The option can also execute auto-response actions based on SCTE 104 messages received, and can send newly generated SCTE 104 packets to other downstream systems as well.
“The more complex broadcast infrastructures become and the greater the variety of delivery methods, the harder it is to manage SCTE 104 messages. We developed these software options to help our customers ensure prompt and accurate digital program insertion in the face of growing complexity,” said Bob McAlpine, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Cobalt Digital. “We’re grateful that such an esteemed industry publication has recognized our efforts to simplify this crucial piece of the broadcast workflow.”
More information about Cobalt Digital and its products is available at www.cobaltdigital.com.
About Cobalt Digital
Cobalt Digital Inc. designs and manufactures award-winning 3G/HD/SD conversion, terminal, throwdown, and multiviewer technology for the broadcast television environment. As a founding partner in the openGear® initiative, Cobalt offers a full range of openGear video and audio processing card solutions for applications such as closed-caption compliance monitoring, OB production, master control, HD news production, signal transport, audio loudness, and color correction. Cobalt’s Blue Box Group™ line of interface converter boxes streamlines and simplifies a wide range of 3G/HD/SD conversion and signal transport tasks. The company’s multi-image display processors enable multiviewer capabilities in the most demanding studio and remote broadcasting environments. Distributed through a worldwide network of dealers, system integrators, and other partners, Cobalt Digital products are backed with a five-year warranty. More information is available at www.cobaltdigital.com.