RedShark Awards winners for NAB 2017
By Jim Bask
Congrats to G-Technology, Atomos, NewTek iZotope and Teradek on their much deserved Red Shark best of NAB 2017 Awards!
Our RedShark team trawled through NAB to find potential winners. This was not a perfect process – there was absolutely no chance that we would get round to everybody, so it’s important to say that our system is not flawless. There may be potential winners out there that we have missed and to anyone who thinks they might have been overlooked, the message is simply to tell us. Tell us now to look out for you next time and then tell us again when we announce the next awards which will be in September at IBC2017 in Amsterdam.
Best HDR Product – Atomos Sumo
There was no doubt that this was to be the winner, except that it’s not going to ship for several months. We debated whether it should be excluded because of this but having seen the product in prototype form it was clear that the Sumo is at an advanced stage. There is no sense in which it’s vapourware. That being the case, it’s a worthy winner because it’s going to bring HDR monitoring to the masses at a great price point. And that’s without taking into account that it’s a video switcher and a 4K video recorder too
Best Storage Device – G-Technology, EV Series
G-Technology has almost become the default choice for DITs and anyone who needs to store and move large media files. The new EV range includes Thunderbolt 3, giving a very big speed increase. They’ve also started adding HDMI sockets to their Thunderbolt products. Why would you want an HDMI socket on a drive? Because Thunderbolt 3 can power your monitor too. This allows you to daisy-chain your monitor and your drive with the same, single connection to your laptop.
All of this, together with stylish industrial design and a five-year warranty, encouraged us to give G-Technology this award.
Best Live Production Product – NewTek Tricaster TC1
The new Tricaster works with 4K video and is built on top of NewTek’s remarkable NDI video over IP network technology. While other companies dance around each other to arrive at interoperability, NewTek has gone ahead and made a comprehensive and open IP video ecosystem that just works.
Best IP Product – NewTek NDI
NDI deserves to win this. At the show, NewTek had over 40 NDI sources coming from other booths on the show floor, across a hastily assembled network. This sounds like a recipe for disaster. But in practice, it worked beautifully, and it made the point that NDI is here and now. Not only that, but broadcast-level manufacturers like Vizrt are including it in their products, dispelling any doubts about quality.