At National Association of Broadcasters Convention, the world's largest electronic media show, Thomson, showcased a comprehensive set of digital application offerings including products and solutions supporting multi-format and multi- distribution operations. Innovations in products and technologies as well as major customer orders announced this week strengthen Thomson's leading position as a technology leader in products and systems for broadcast, networking, professional AV and film production.

"Our efforts over the past two years to push forward the integration of production, post-production and delivery workflows, while guaranteeing the quality our clients and partners have come to expect are fully manifesting themselves at this year's exciting show", said Frank Dangeard, Chairman & CEO of Thomson.

Innovative products
Infinity Series and Open Alliance Program
Grass Valley showed its Infinity Series, which includes the digital camcorder, digital recorder and off-the-shelf removable media. This revolutionary, IT-immersed ENG/EFP product line creates a truly open production solution that avoids proprietary approaches and uses advanced technologies in new ways in order to provide users with a choice in video formats, compression, recording media, connectivity, and workflows.

To build upon this philosophy of openness and flexibility, Grass Valley announced the Infinity Open Alliance Partner (OAP) initiative, a program aimed at moving away from the dictated approaches and proprietary recording, storage and playback formats, through use of the Grass Valley REV PRO removable disk system for content interchange. Leading manufacturers have already announced their support for the OAP program, including Avid Technology Inc., HP, Telestream, MainConcept, MOG Solutions and Cineform.

HD Advanced Video Compression Chip
Grass Valley showed its HD Advanced Video Compression Chip, the next generation in advanced digital video signal processing chip design. This custom-designed processor enables efficient MPEG 2, MPEG 4 coding in HD and SD, DV coding, as well as decoding and transcoding all in a single chip set.

Enhanced Broadcast verification
Thomson Content Security unveiled the next generation of its broadcast verification product Nextracker, developed for syndicators, networks and other broadcast distributors. Nextracker represents a large part of Thomson's powerful investment in Broadcast and filmed content security from production through delivery.

Mobile TV
Thomson also showcased a number of other innovative solutions and demonstrations, specifically in Mobile TV, where it introduced "Multiple Conditional Access Systems" solutions. These integrate with the wider content security strategy of Thomson.

New orders
Several important orders have been announced on the show, especially for IPTV and Digital News Production Systems.

IPTV
With IPTV being more and more a key topic for broadcasters, Grass Valley announced that Telefonicà has placed a multi-million order to support expanded IPTV Services. Imagenio, the IPTV service from Spanish telecom operator Telefónica, is the fastest-growing IPTV service in Europe. To enable Telefónica to roll the service out across the whole of Spain, and significantly expand its channel offering, Grass Valley will provide SD and HD MPEG-4 ViBE encoding platforms as well as other equipment and systems integration. When currently offering 48 television and 15 radio channels, the new Grass Valley MPEG-4 system will expand to more than 140 channels, including a number of premium, HD services.

Digital News Production Systems
Supporting global broadcasters move from analog tape-based news production systems to digital file-based approaches, Grass Valley announced more than 20 million euros in recent orders for its Digital News Production systems (DNP) technology and new K2 Media Client and Media Server Systems. Customers include broadcasters in north and south America (Belo Broadcasting and Tribune, in the United States; Global Television Network, in Canada; TV Cultura, in Brazil), Europe (BBC Wales, in the United Kingdom, SRG, in Switzerland) and Australia (WIN Television).

Continuing to prove its success in multiformat systems and production, Grass Valley will build a large outside broadcast unit, in a deal valued at approximately EUR 20 million for leading Italian operator Euroscena's fleet of HD trucks. The three identical articulated trucks are equipped for multi-format HD production facilities, for Sports and Entertainment. The fleet will be delivered in summer 2006.

Thomson's view of challenges lying ahead for the Media Technology Industry
At NAB on April 26, Thomson's CEO Frank E. Dangeard challenged in a keynote speech the opportunities for the Media technology industry to develop more open systems and standards, and the means this industry will use to integrate further, in a smart and secure manner, advanced video technologies.

Thomson is present at NAB on four different pavilions throughout the show: Broadcast & ProAV (SU 2906), Content Distribution & Transmission (SU 2970), Film & Video Professionals (SL 544), Content Security (SU 844) pavilions. Visit our virtual booth tour at http://thomsongrassvalley.com/tour.