PlayBox Technology Mixed Playout In Airbox 4

PlayBox Technology's widely used AirBox content player is showing the latest AirBox 4 features in SD, HD and DVB (IP/ASI at NAB 2008. Adding to established capabilities this provides efficient, straightforward and cost-effective operation in today's mixed format world. There is also support for advanced MPEG-4 compression.
AirBox 4 allows the continuous realtime playback of playlists containing a mix of video formats and frame rates complete with transitions between clips and frame-accurate timing. This is handled smoothly by AirBox 4 to provide a fuss-free playout that retains the highest technical quality. It avoids having to plan content conversion before playout as well as facing the time-consuming and costly business of transcoding, copying and additional QC.
AirBox 4 employs a powerful unification engine that allows content from different sources to be put together as a single output type: a specific resolution, frame rate, audio frequency and picture aspect ratio. So mobile phone, SD and HD content could easily play out as a unified NTSC/PAL signal, regardless of whether the source content is 15, 25 or 30 frames per second, or its audio is 8, 22.050, 44.1 or 48KHz. AirBox 4 uses a unique approach that supports each popular file format with dedicated file handlers, ensuring fast and efficient cueing and playout. Other 'unknown' file types are subjected to a generic approach with playout closely monitored allowing corrective action if the format does not play correctly.
PlayBox Technology AirBox 4 playout servers will now handle all popular modern compression systems including MPEG4 AVC/H.264 and VC-1/WMV as well as the established MPEG-2 and DV compression formats. This is in line with the increasing use of MPEG-4 based compression that offers up to twice the efficiency of MPEG-2, both for standard and high definition broadcasts. Other file formats handled by AirBox 4 include MXF, DivX/Xvid and QuickTime, as well as supporting slideshows with JPEG stills and mp3 audio.
PlayBox Technology is an international communications and information technology company serving the broadcast, corporate and digital signage markets in more than 60 countries.
Their users cover a wide range of today's broadcast activities and include start-up TV channels, webcasters, DVB (IP/ASI) TV channels, interactive TV and music channels, film channels, remote TV channels and disaster recovery channels as well as satellite, local, regional, national and international broadcasters.
Further information is available at: www.playbox.tv.
(KMcA/JM)