The National Hockey League will debut NHL Network Online in time for the Stanley Cup playoffs, along with a new broadband video player powered by NeuLion, delivering seven channels of NHL programming. Andre Mika, the NHL's vice president for broadband and new media, says NHL fans needed a video player that wasn’t just sleek and useful but also one that provided high-quality video.

Just in time for NAB, NHK is rolling out its latest HD mobile broadcast production truck. The brand new K3 Ruby, which will be showcased in tours at NAB at the Gerling & Associates booth, will be used for Major League Baseball Coverage as early as May 2008, and features some of the industry’s most cutting-edge components.

Thomson is revamping some of its production systems and will be displaying shipping and fully functional versions of its Infinity acquisition systems as well. Topping the list of enhanced products is Ignite, the SD and HD integrated production system finding sales success at regional sports networks and TV stations. The system streamlines the process to make live newscasts and other types of video productions fast and error-free.

Sports broadcasters looking for high-quality HD-acquisition options have a new choice in Panasonic’s AK-HC1800 HD multi-purpose camera (priced at $28,000) to be introduced this April at NAB. This addition to Panasonic’s line of cameras is equipped with three 2.2-megapixel CCDs, which provide native 1080i video capture for high-level, high-definition production.

The Kahuna SD/HD multiformat production switcher from Snell & Wilcox is making inroads into the sports market, and the company hopes a litany of new features debuting at NAB will continue momentum gains.

Linear Acoustic, a manufacturer of customer-centric multichannel sound solutions for digital broadcast, is now shipping the new UPMAX:neo 2-channel to 5.1-channel surround upmixer.

Euphonix will introduce a new modular remote audio interface system for broadcast applications featuring redundant fiber audio connectivity and control at NAB. It connects multiple high-density stage boxes into the Euphonix DSP SuperCore via MADI over fiber with control directly from the console’s channel strips.

Ascent Media Group will share a variety of outsourced solutions for the creation, management and distribution of media content with NAB attendees and content owners at this year’s show.

The SAMMA Solo will be introduced in the United States for the first time at NAB. SAMMA Solo provides an end-to-end systems approach to digitizing archival videotape content. SAMMA Solo can be purchased in single or multiple channel configurations to fit any size archive project. It will handle inputs from any analog or digital tape machine and output multiple simultaneous digital files and a metadata report on the technical quality of the content.

At NAB 2008, IBM and its partners will demonstrate a suite of HD sports systems supporting pre-production, production, post-production, and preservation and archive activities. IBM’s Media Hub Solution Framework provides an infrastructure based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and is designed to manage the increasing complexity of running a content-based business from the point of creation to the distribution of digital content.

A new XDCAM HD camera system from Sony that will make its debut at NAB is slated to be used in Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The PDW-700 camera can capture full-resolution 1920x1080 4:2:2 images at 50 Mbps and works hand-in-hand with the PDW-1500 recording deck.

Belo Corp’s NBC affiliate, KGW in Portland, Oregon, began broadcasting its daily news programming in HDTV earlier this year. For the HD transition, KGW selected six Fujinon XA22X7.5BES compact HD studio lenses. Three of those lenses are mounted on Grass Valley LDK-4000 studio cameras and are currently in use at KGW NewsChannel 8’s main studio in Portland to produce the studio portions of the station’s news broadcasts in HD.

Shure will be exhibiting its line of broadcast, field production, and studio production microphones at NAB.

For NAB 2008, Gerling and Associates will be demonstrating the finished product that was introduced last year. “The Really Big Show,” owned by IMS, is a 53-foot trailer with a 51-foot expanding-side system that extends more than 80 inches outward. The product is ideal for the North American remote-production industry, affording as much space as a double-expanding-side trailer with the weight of a single-expanding-side trailer.

Motorola will be on the NAB show floor with a whole new line of products that enable HD. “We are introducing the concept of ‘an all-IP headend,’” says Senior Marketing Director Martin Stein. “Our newest generation of HD encoders allows the highest quality at economical bitrates.”

Telestream Pipeline, Telestream's award-winning network video capture family, can now ingest media from tape or live sources directly into Final Cut Server, Apple's powerful new media asset management and workflow automation software. Pipeline now also supports ProRes 422, Apple's innovative post-production format that offers pristine quality at small file sizes. This includes the ability to edit while ingesting for Final Cut Pro workflows. Telestream announced support for Pro Res 422 standard definition workflows today and high definition workflows later this year. In addition, Telestream's Episode encoding software expands format support beyond QuickTime to virtually any file format for Final Cut Server.

TSL is rolling out a new range of intelligent Mains Distribution Units (MDUs) at NAB 2008. The company says the new Power Manager Series allows broadcasters to take complete control of their technical infrastructure, providing flexible power management solutions.

SGI will demonstrate its digital-content-management solutions, servers, and storage and visualization products at NAB 2008.

Indianapolis Public Schools Television has installed three Utah Scientific routers and the company's SC-4 control system to support production, videoconferencing, distance learning, training opportunities, and community programming in the district that serves 35,000 students spread among 79 buildings. Located in a central facility in the Indiana capital, the district's television operation feeds 70 channels to the school system, which is the largest in Indiana, as well as two channels to communitywide cable television.