Cabsat 2009

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Dr. Riyadh Najm, president of ASBU with Roger Crumpton of the IABM and Sharad Sadhu from ASBU at the CTO panel discussion at CABSAT 2009.

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The Flying camera attracted a lot of attention at CABSAT 2009.

The event marked a new beginning for JVC as well, whose European office will replace its Japanese operations at its UAE office. Chris Darnely, who has been with JVC in the UK, will head the JVC Professional Gulf operations and relocate to Dubai this month.

"Saudi Arabia and the UAE were overseen by Japan previously," Darnley said. "Now the whole GCC and MEA regions come under the Gulf and London office. With this, we hope to bring more professional solutions to this market and address this sector more aggressively along with our distributor Oasis Enterprises . The previous office was more focused on consumer solutions. Our new office will also ensure that JVC can bring in its European experts to service the EMEA market."

Dubai-based distributor Amaranthine had a prominent presence at the show with the Arriflex D-21 film-style digital camera that combines high-end film style functionality, handling and creative options with the immediacy and economy of digital acquisition.

The camera's bright optical viewfinder has zero delay, works without power and shows an image area outside the primary image, allowing operators to treat it as they would a 35 mm camera. The super 35-sized 4:3 sensor accommodates all image formats, including Mscope anamorphic 2.40:1, and exhibits the same depth of field as 35 mm film.

After CABSAT, Amaranthine also held a one-day workshop for cameramen in the region to familiarise themselves with the camera. Freelance DoP Frank Vanvught conducted the workshop.

The Spanish, German and UK pavilions also swelled with more manufacturers and systems integrators from their respective countries this year. Several are worthy of mention in the Spanish, French and UK pavilions.

Tedial came to CABSAT for the first time with one single, well integrated and comprehensive media asset management solution that takes care of a company's entire data management process while VSN was prominent for its newsroom system demo.

The participation of French companies in CABSAT has also increased dramatically since 2007, according to the French agency for international business development, UBIFRANCE. 17 companies were present at the French pavilion in the 2009 exhibition, up from just seven exhibitors in 2007.

A spokesperson for UBIFRANCE said Dubai is considered to be a regional hub for the broadcasting industry, with many large French broadcast technology companies already operating here in cooperation with local businesses. The French pavilion featured companies such as Thales, AETA Audio Systems, Isosytem and Tonna.

The UK pavilion also played a very active role at the show. Several British manufacturers came to CABSAT for the first time this year.

Some highlights worth mentioning include IPV, a major supplier of low-bit rate, frame-accurate video technology to the broadcast and professional video sectors. IPV, who had, thus far, kept a low profile with its Spectre View browse solution came to CABSAT to showcase Curator, its entry-level MAM solution.

An affordable, proxy-based tapeless workflow environment running on both PC and Apple Mac platforms, the Curator system helps end users efficiently fulfill tasks such as desktop editing media annotation, review and approve and general media browsing.

It is a complete solution that can efficiently ingest, encode or transcode, at low bitrate, proxy SDI or file-based media, which can then be used concurrently by multiple users. Whatever the source of the material, the Curator version is guaranteed to be frame accurate at all times giving an unprecedented desktop experience.

"The Curator system has been a huge success with a number of systems already in use at key media installations around the world," stated Nigel Booth, executive VP for sales and marketing at IPV.

"The system enables broadcasters to provide a cost efficient means of sharing content in a file-based workflow environment. By reducing costs and increasing productivity, we have enabled our customers to maximise on their business returns."

Megahertz also had a couple of special announcements to make. The systems integrator, who has operated in the Middle East for the last 20 years, tied up with Qatar-based Greenland International Enterprises to improve their offerings in the Middle East. Greenland's local knowledge and infrastructure as well as availability of Arabic-speaking staff who are well-versed in both broadcast and IT skills will complement MHz broadcast expertise.

Megahertz also announced that it was working closely with Feltech to look at potential opportunities to provide turnkey solutions for customers in the Middle East.

Argosy was also at CABSAT to network with companies and look at new deals in the Middle East. Mike Purnell of Argosy stated: "We are on target and very pleased with the business we are doing here."

TMD, in the meantime, made its first appearance at the exhibition to demonstrate its media asset management solution Mediaflex.

The UK Trade Fair also organised a special conference at which HD challenges in the region were discussed in great detail. Mike Whittaker, vice president of Broadcast Operations & Technology at Showtime and Andrew Davies, business development manager for TSL Middle East delivered presentations on some of the key challenges facing the industry.

Mark Birchall, managing director of the UK Trade Fair stated that the UK pavilion had grown by about 15% from the last year.

"The UK pavilion is about 800 sq.ms with about 55 companies on the UK pavilion at CABSAT. In the satellite area, we had about 25 companies. In all, we had about 75 companies exhibiting. It shows the close ties we have with this region," Birchall stated.

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