In Broadcast - January 2015 - 24

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 5 - Issue 1 | January 2015

InReply

Datavideo Products
- All About Flexibility
Datavideo's Marketing Manager Valentijn Diemel
talks about new markets, new products
and increased ﬂexibility...
InBroadcast: How is your company adapting to
meet customer demands?
Valentijn Diemel: Our company is seeing a small
shift in the type of end users. Before, Datavideo
products were mainly used by professionals all over
the world. Nowadays, we see that we are serving
a growing group of customers in the educational
ﬁeld. We see that our products are being used in
high schools, colleges and universities. They use
our products as an internal TV channel, or in special
media technology courses. The reason they choose
Datavideo products is that our equipment lacks a
steep learning curve and is very affordable.
If you look at other products in our market, those
are often way too complicated for use in education.
All our switchers and virtual studios feature almost
the same layout, so knowing one product means that
you can certainly understand what's going on with
our other products.
The other side that we're improving is ﬂexibility.
For instance, our eight or 12 channel switcher, the
SE-2800, is available in a couple of different forms.
You can get it as a standalone product, as a mobile
"suitcase" studio, as a bigger portable studio or
as a full 19" rack including all peripherals. Your
employees can learn to work with the smallest, and
can still operate the bigger ones. That's ﬂexibility!
InB: What criteria are broadcasters using to
select products?
VD: Well, maybe not broadcasters, but we're being
confronted with users that are looking for switchers
that are very easy to use. Like in education, there is
so much to learn about mixing live video and there's
limited time available. Having a switcher that's
pretty straightforward certainly eases the pain a bit.
In an EFP course, students are learning how to set
up a production site, how to make certain shots and
how to work with a switcher.
As a student, you don't want to be confronted with
an awfully complicated
switcher; you just want
to learn the differences
between a hard cut and
a cross dissolve, for
instance. It's the same
thing when working with
virtual studios. Sure,
there are manufacturers
that deliver stunning

virtual sets, including digital cranes that track
camera movement and render the studio in realtime, but as a student or a teacher, you want to learn
the basics.
So by developing products that actually work in
real life, without highly skilled personnel and the
time to conquer a steep learning curve, we make it a
lot easier for the entry level market.
InB: Which markets are showing particular
activity?
VD: As said before, we're focusing more and more
on the educational market. Since the internets'
infrastructure is improving worldwide, and even
people in the most remote areas can get reliable
service, there's a big position for MOOCs - Massive
Open Online Courses. With MOOCs, anybody that has
a reliable internet connection can enjoy high quality
education in their own home. MOOCs are considered
"the education of the future" by many lecturers all
over the world.
Recording MOOCs is very easy with our virtual
studio; just a simple green wall & ﬂoor and some
lights and you're good to go. With the Datavideo
TVS-1000, you can record and stream your lecture
to your audience. With built in support for streaming
CDN's like YouTube and Ustream, you can reach a
wide audience with very little effort!
Next to education, our products are still widely
used in houses of worship. We see that markets like
that are very fond of our products, mostly because
they are so easy to use. The people that
are operating our products are sometimes
just enthusiasts without a special video
education; they just want to make nice
broadcasts for their environment.

TVS-1000 the entry
level virtual studio solution

InB: Any product innovations ahead that you
can discuss?
VD: We keep innovating our virtual studios. The
version we have now is very suitable for the entry
level market, say education or small corporations.
What we're developing is a (still simple) virtual studio
that is suitable for small broadcasters. Think about
a couple more camera inputs and an auxiliary HDMI
input for PC's.
We're also developing smaller switchers, because
we see a rising demand in switchers with four inputs.
With regular technology, you'll need to sacriﬁce two
channels for CG, but with our technology, you can
just use a simple HDMI input from a laptop, thus
leaving three channels for your cameras.
InB: Thank you for taking time to answer our
questions.

Datavideo 2800 series
lineup; HS-2800 hand carry
system, MS-2800 portable
system and OBV-2800

http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UUQtYo_VDTs http://vimeo.com/80505066

In Broadcast - January 2015

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