Iomega storage inside camera, DVR
The owners of the Technicolor patent technology announced a new line of broadcast industry products on Monday that are the first to use removable storage disks from Iomega as replacements for video tape.
Thompson Multimedia, through its Grass Valley property, announced a new digital camcorder and media recorder (DMR) under its Infinity brand this week at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam. Both camera and VTR replacement can use either Iomega's REV or REV PRO removable disks in conjunction with solid-state flash memory instead of digital video tape for recording and playback media.
The camera is expected to be available in early 2006 with a $20,000 price tag. The camera shoots standard or high-definition signals ranging from 525i60, 625i50, 1080i50, 1080i60, 720p50, or 720p60. Video can be encoded as DV25 (compatible with DVCam and DVCPRO), MPEG-2, or the powerful JPEG 2000 compression scheme.
At a price of $10,000, the nonlinear edit/playback device works like a tape machine but uses a removable disk and has network capabilities through a FireWire (IEEE 1394) or Gigabit Ethernet connection or wirelessly over a Wi-Fi network.
Grass Valley contracted Iomega to make special REV removable disks for use in both the camera and the playback machine. The disks are expected to be available later this year in 10-packs for approximately $75 per 35GB disk.
Iomega said the 35GB disks can store more than two hours of SD (standard definition) or 45 minutes of HD (high definition) video and have an estimated archival storage lifespan of 30 years.
While some may claim that there is a certain proprietary aspect to the Thompson products, broadcasters may want to note that Iomega probably won't be the last storage company to converge PC technology with traditional broadcast tools.