Flash XDR Goes Down A Storm At NAB 2008

Heralding as a 'revolution in high-quality solid-state HD video acquisition', the new Flash Xstream Data Recorder (XDR) is said to have been a great success at this month's NAB 2008 in Las Vegas.
Flash XDR received prestigious awards from Broadcast Engineering and Videography and was acclaimed by many conventioneers as heralding a new age in compact, affordable, high-efficiency programme production.
Exhibited as a major new element of the Polecam exhibit in the NAB Central Hall, Flash XDR is an entirely electronic recorder requiring no tape or disc drive mechanism. Capturing straight to CompactFlash, the 178 x 127 x 44 unit combines low power consumption with very light weight (500 g) and very high transportability.
"This is exactly the technology we need to advance our own product range into HD," commented Steffan Hewitt, inventor of the Polecam system.
"The combination of decreasing cost-per-gigabyte and increasing storage capacity has made solid-state media the ideal format for HD video acquisition.
"Flash XDR is comparable in size with the average broadcast camera battery and can be used with the latest generation of miniature HD camera heads or fed from the video output of an HD camcorder," he said.
Like Polecam itself, Flash XDR is very easy to transport, to set up and to re-stow. Files can be transferred directly to PC for editing without time being lost copying from tape. Flash XDR users also have the option of transmitting files to base rather than having to organise delivery of tapes or disks.
The recorder is housed in a rugged aluminium chassis with a rubberised protective jacket and can easily be mounted to Polecam in tripod-based or harness-based configuration.
Flash XDR stores up to 164 minutes of HD on four hot-swappable 16 Gbyte CompactFlash cards.
Polecam was established in 1998 by extreme sports cameraman/director Steffan Hewitt.
Polecam now sells successfully around the world from its base near Bedford.¨
For further information: www.polecam.com
(DS)