Monthly Update – July 2021
back to newsWe kick off the new financial year with some great products to showcase, exciting projects and as always, some insight into where I think we are heading technology wise.
Products
Leading on from our recent partnership, D2N – Technology Solutions is now carrying spares and a full demo system enabling us to give potential customers the chance to try before you buy. We feel that with such an investment, you simply cannot beat being able to try the solution first.
Rf Optic have recently published their quarterly newsletter with their focus on deploying solutions for 5G networks owners along with their Integrated Monitoring & Control System. Here in Australia, we sell Rf over Fibre to Defence, Broadcast and Communication customers ranging from a cost effective 2.5GHz solution right up to 40GHz bi-directional packages.
Clear-Com have released their Arcadia base station which provides connectivity for just about every Clear-Com product on the market. FreeSpeak II and Edge are supported along with Dante, 2 & 4 Wire, with HelixNet connectivity coming soon! This is the perfect device for those owners of Clear-Com partyline, or wireless kit looking for that piece of glue to bring it all together.
Kiloview have released their new Intercom Server. Available as a free firmware upgrade across their range of encoders and decoders, the new Intercom Server brings connectivity to not just to the Kiloview hardware, but PC and mobile devices as well.
Looking for assistance with any product you have purchased from us?
Simply email service@d2n.com.au and one of our team will be in contact to discuss your challenges.
Rental
Thinking outside the box, D2N has developed a portable content transmission package. Features include dual transmit and receive paths (SDI or HDMI), 64 channels of audio, monitoring of all vision & audio paths and backed by a TVU 4G Bonded router. These portable kits are perfect for corporate AV jobs where you want redundancy in your paths or for those remote location jobs where you need more than the off-the-shelf solutions can offer. D2N has 6 of these kits available for hire with more planned in the future.
With Covid locking down NSW, VIC and now QLD the rest our rental division has slowed down giving us valuable time to clean and update the inventory. We still have a couple of long-term hires running which is great, and we have also expanded our GreenGO inventory as well with wired and wireless intercom packs available for hire.
Sales
Hytera and Kiloview have been the real standouts across July!
One of our long-term broadcast customers has upgraded their Hytera repeater inventory to XPT giving them much more flexibility in the type of solutions they can deploy.
The team at AIRSPEEDER expanded their radio inventory. Athletics WA took up a Hytera radio solution to improve the way their meetings are run.
Endemol Shine, Brandfilms, and CMS Australia all took up additional Kiloview stock as well. Our most popular models being the E1/E2 and rack mount products.
We also undertook some ACMA licence planning and product compliance testing for a Defence supplier, amongst all the regular ACMA license work we do.
Sales of Axiwi to the horse riding and training industry also did quite well with several packages being sold to schools around the country.
Lastly, we also sold our first Hollyland communications package with the T1000. The T1000 is a DECT based multi-user wireless intercom system. Very cost effective, single channel only with the ability to interface a single 4 wire device
Where are we headed:
Over the last 12-18 months we have seen an explosion in the proliferation of NDI based products and software systems. From a handful of manufacturers back in 2018-19 to now dozens of companies offering up their solutions to an ever-accepting market.
A question I often ponder and at times discuss with colleagues is how NDI might impact the professional end of the broadcast market when ‘everyone’ seems to be talking about SMPTE-2110. For me I think it really comes back to what is fit for purpose for your operation, NDI is not the right choice for everyone, nor is SMPTE-2110.
Lastly, baseband (SDI) still has an important role to play and will do for several years yet. The life span of existing SDI kit has probably been extended a few years as well because of the financial impact of Covid 19. IE: Our reinvestment cycles might slow for a year or two whilst we recover the lost revenues. Manufacturers might also be a little more conservative about bringing new product into a market that simply doesn’t have the capex to spend.
NDI is a very cost-effective way of generating content and now with V5 moving it around the planet. I think for many broadcasters and production houses it offers a way to become fully immersed into the IP space without the costs and complexity of a SMPTE-2110 solution. Move over to the larger multi-national broadcast networks and you find 2110 has had much more success, but like any ‘still reasonably new’ technology is still finding its way through the real-world challenges once deployed, especially when it comes to interoperability.
My closing comment is, watch for the manufacturer that embraces both and provides an effective way of moving and using both NDI and 2110 in a practical manner. Integration is key so when you have a device or service than do that function ‘at scale’ and with 100% reliability it will be a game changer.
#eyesforward
Jason Owen
