Pacific Television Center (PacTV), a Los Angeles-based, global transmission and production company, has purchased an NVISION 8576 router from Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, for its new state-of-the-art London facility with IP and 4K capabilities. The new router is a central component of the operation and will manage all of the global connectivity into and out of the London facility.
This latest investment means PacTV will now have Grass Valley routers in five of its managed locations in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Singapore and now London, offering round-the-clock support and services such as fiber connectivity and satellite coordination. The company installed its first Grass Valley router in 2002 and has been relying on the technology ever since.
“Reliability is critical, and we know from experience in our other locations that Grass Valley routers have a long life span,” said Nick Castaneda, VP of development of PacTV. “By using Grass Valley equipment at our facilities, colleagues can now manage each other’s routers using similar, intuitive user interfaces and controls. For our customers, this means that we can minimize disruptions and provide reliable transmission services under the most demanding circumstances.”
With the new router, PacTV operators are able to quickly have source/destination status for high-demand resources, helping make quick decisions for customers. Furthermore, programming can now be done with ease, and main components of the system can be monitored through the tabbed system in NV9000-SE Utilities.
As PacTV looks to the future, the new router ensures an IP delivery method via Ethernet or fiber link as video transport becomes more integrated toward IP delivery. PacTV will increasingly need to take the current video formats of HD-SDI and ASI and apply them in IP multicast or unicast applications. The Grass Valley router will provide an intermediate device to route these into various networks and take them away when the service is complete.
The NVISION 8576 router is part of the NVISION 8500 hybrid router series, designed for production and playout applications from trucks to the largest engine rooms. It offers the convenience of integrated audio processing, SMPTE 2022 IP routing and simplified cable management.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More