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Bridge Technologies to Showcase ‘Transformative’ Technology for Remote Production at IBC

New Widglets API for VB440 probe puts full-motion, low-latency video/audio HTML5 video monitoring wherever it’s needed

OSLO, Norway – 20 August 2019

At IBC (Stand 1.A71) Bridge Technologies is showcasing a new capability – as a technology demonstration, but due for imminent customer availability – that promises to be transformative for remote production. The technology is a Widglets™API HTML5 video monitor for the company’s VB440 network probe that allows the probe to become truly multifunctional beyond its current widespread deployment for monitoring IP networks, extending its usefulness well beyond test and measurement. By leveraging the Widglets API, users can, for example, now deliver a full-motion, colour-accurate and ultra-low latency video monitoring capability to any location or any application where it is needed: all that is required is a laptop and a network connection.

“There are many challenges in all-IP remote production, and applications throughout the broadcast chain that would gain enormous insight and benefit from being able to see and understand what’s going on with the picture – and this new Widglets API allows that,” said Simen K Frostad, Chairman, Bridge Technologies. “Using the new Widglets API for the VB440, video monitoring can be embedded within any HTML code – making it available to anyone connected via a web browser. That has huge potential implications, for example, for the many commentators deployed at major events such as the Rugby World Cup or the Olympics, wherever they are. Now, those commentators can have access to every video and audio stream – from an uncompressed source at location, with colour accuracy, in full-motion, with effectively zero latency, all of which are essential for remote production.”

The new Widglets API for the VB440 has been under evaluation by some of the industry’s most innovative, highest profile broadcast companies for the past few months – and it will allow those companies to achieve functionality in remote production that was previously unimaginable. These broadcasters are breaking new ground with the exclusive use of IP for remote production, and the Widglets API for the VB440 will enable them to take their leadership even further, creating new infrastructures and integrating video monitoring into a number of new areas.

“Feedback has been incredibly positive – as good as we could have hoped – and it has also helped us to further develop and refine the Widglets API in a live working production environment,” continued Frostad. “Especially compelling is how those companies can clearly see how the Widglets API will enable it to substantially reduce the complexity of covering major events. Their feedback also included the enormous potential they see in no longer requiring specialist video monitoring equipment, such that it becomes both practicable and affordable to deploy it anywhere it is needed. They also identified the potential of the new Widglets API for the VB440 to allow them to simply add new capabilities to a broad range of applications.”

The VB440 IP probe supports interface speeds including 10, 25, 40, 50 and up to 100 Gigabit on dual interfaces, so that even the largest of media networks can be accommodated with analysis of SD, HD i and p, HD HDR, 4K and 4K HDR and above. It was originally designed for, and is widely deployed to enable, the monitoring and analysis of high-bitrate broadcast media traffic as defined in ST2110 and ST2022-6, with ST2022-7 redundancy, the full NMOS suite of discovery/control and PTP analysis for core broadcasting networks, production studios, master control centres and outside broadcast vehicles and venues.