Article Overview

Tektronix Showcases New Products to Solve Digital Video Delivery & Quality Challenges

Test- and Measurement Equipment from Tektronix

Tektronix, Inc., the market leader in broadcast video test, monitoring and analysis solutions, featured an extensive range of new and enhanced products and solutions at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 2010. Tektronix showcased solutions across its portfolio of solutions for SD to HD, to 3G-SDI and MPEG monitoring technologies.

Broadest and Most Comprehensive Video Test and Monitoring Portfolio Leading the Digital TV Test Evolution With An Eye On Content

Highlights for this year’s show included industry leading test and measurement solutions for 3G-SDI monitoring, Audio Loudness, and file-based video. In addition, new software tools support QoE artifact detection for monitoring off-air broadcasts and end-to-end troubleshooting of digital video services for cable operators.

The transition to digital video requires a new class of test and measurement tools to accommodate new, faster and often more complex technologies. Tektronix’ mission critical test, measurement and monitoring tools help preserve signal integrity, reduce production time, reduce operating costs, ensure standards compliance and optimize system performance. Tektronix is the video test expert, providing the broadest and most comprehensive video test and monitoring portfolio for existing analog and new digital video technologies andwill be demonstrating the latest in innovative video test technologies in its booth.

Rolling Out 3G-SDI Updates to Waveform Monitor and Rasterizer Families

Tektronix usined the conference to demonstrate the capabilities of the recently introduced WFM8200 and WFM8300 advanced waveform monitors and introducing the new WVR8200 and WVR8300 rasterizers. These instruments provide high quality, real-time, automated 3G-SDI Eye pattern display and jitter measurements that help broadcasters and network operators easily monitor and diagnose signal problems. The new rasterizers provide the same capabilities as the waveform monitor equivalents, but are designed for use with an external display and offer enhanced remote monitoring and control capabilities

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Turning Up Audio Loudness Measurement Capabilities

Tektronix has further enhanced its family of waveform monitors and rasterizers with critical audio loudness capability. Building upon its current loudness measurement capability, Tektronix now offers WFM6000/7000 and WVR6000/7000 Series customers new firmware and software upgrades that adhere to the ATSC A/85 Recommendation and ITU-R BS.1770-1/1771 specifications. The upgrades include capabilities such as an Audio Loudness Meter, an Audio Loudness Session Display, and the industry’s first audio loudness monitoring of Dolby Digital Plus audio, among others

Delivering Complete Ingest to Edge QoE Monitoring Solution for Cable Operators

Tektronix announced it is the only vendor offering a solution from RF Ingest to Edge that covers both QoS and QoE to meet the spectrum of challenges cable and telco operators face in managing impairment and artifact detection issues in their networks. New Quality of Experience (QoE) detection capabilities for its industry-leading family of RF and IP network probes set the stage for the company’s expanded focus on helping cable and telco operators to more reliably and cost effectively deliver the best experience possible to their viewers

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Technology Demonstrations Showcased at NAB– Testing for 3D

3D offers an enhanced experience for the viewer in the theater and at home and there is now the potential need to generate more HD content that supports 3D. Broadcasters and post production facilities can now differentiate themselves by offering enhanced quality of experience to their viewers with 3D content. Ensuring synchronization between the left and right eye video signals and that these signals are not swapped at the input to the system is critical to the viewers’ experience. In order to ensure suitable parallax between the left eye and right eye, the user needs to be able to measure the disparity between the two images. To meet these needs, Tektronix was showcasting two unique 3D technology demonstrations in its booth during NAB 2010:

• The first demonstration will highlight 3D test signals generated as left eye and right eye images from the TG700 Multiformat Video Generator. The WFM8300 Waveform Monitor will have a technology showing of SyncVu, which provides synchronized views of the left two tiles and right two tiles of the four tile display. This allows the user to quickly configure the measurement displays to show the left eye and right eye views of the signals in the simultaneous mode. Alternatively the user can combine the two HD-SDI signals using the Dual Link capabilities of the instrument to measure disparity of the left and right eye in the waveform and picture displays.
 
• The second demonstration will showcase a 3D extension to the VQS1000 Video Quality Software application for measuring single-ended, objective video quality measurements. This includes a 3D version of the picture display showing superimposed left and right eye edges and a Perceived Depth Distribution histogram that indicates the depth information for the video stream.

Cerify ® PC Software Now Tests Apple's ProRes File Format

Cerify PC software now includes Apple's ProRes file format in its already wide range of Codecs supported. Cerify is an automated Quality Control tool that compares streamed or stored video files against user-defined quality templates. With Cerify, content owners, post-production houses, and aggregators can use the same template (on one or multiple files at a time) to QC their product, increasing repeatability of test, reducing rejected content and churn.

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Tektronix TG700 GPS 7 Module Adds New Genlock Capability Suited for OBVan Applications

The Tektronix TG700 Sync Pulse Generator with the GPS 7 Module now provides a new user-selectable genlock function in either a master or slave configuration. This is useful for Outside Broadcast Applications that involve multiple trucks, so that a TG700 within a truck can now be easily set-up to be a master for one production and a slave for the next.

Tektronix Showcases Enhancements Across its MTS400P, MTS415, MTS430 and MTS4SA Product Offerings

Available as a free download to all customers currently using MTS400P, MTS415, MTS430 and MTS4SA version 1.7 software, customers may take advantage of the latest feature enhancements, which include the following:

• New compliance tests per the ATSC Recommendation A/78 and SCTE 142
• ATSC Meta Data Analysis
• Transport Stream Timing
• Ethernet Layer Analysis
• Multiplexer Updates
• And other features such as batch mode TSCA and PID Filtered Recording

As MPEG test and analysis continues to extend deeper into satellite, IP video and cables systems, these updates allow customers to perform deeper analysis than ever before.

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About Tektronix

For more than sixty years, engineers have turned to Tektronix for test, measurement and monitoring solutions to solve design challenges, improve productivity and dramatically reduce time to market. Tektronix is a leading supplier of test instrumentation for engineers focused on electronic design, manufacturing, and advanced technology development. Headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, Tektronix serves customers worldwide and offers award-winning service and support.

Tektronix

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