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Tektronix Adds Eye and Jitter Measurements, ARIB Support to WVR7100 and WVR6100 Rasterizers (7/4/2006)

New Video Tools Enable Operators and Engineers to Quickly and Reliably Determine Signal and Content Quality

Tektronix, Inc. (NYSE: TEK), a leading worldwide provider of test, measurement and monitoring instrumentation, announced new capabilities for the successful WVR7100 and WVR6100 Rasterizers, including Eye pattern display, jitter measurements and cable length measurement for High Definition-Serial Digital Interface (HD-SDI) and Standard Definition-Serial Digital Interface (SD-SDI) signals, to meet the needs of broadcast, production and post-production applications. Also included is support for monitoring ancillary data that conforms to the Association of Radio and Broadcast (ARIB) standards used in Japan.

The transition to digital broadcast technologies has created new business challenges and requirements for video and audio monitoring, increasing the need for tools that quickly verify the quality of digital signals. The WVR7100 and WVR6100 are the Rasterizers of choice to meet customer needs in multi-format environments. With composite, SD and HD video and/or analog, digital, Dolby(R) Digital and Dolby(R) E audio, the WVR7100 and WVR6100 provide cost effective and easy-to-use monitoring that ensure production and broadcast of quality content that adheres to legal broadcast specifications. The addition of new Eye pattern and jitter measurements on the WVR7100 and WVR6100 provide quick insight to the presence and severity of a problem at the physical layer, improving fault finding and error recovery.

"The transition to digital technology continues to revolutionize the broadcast industry and customers have high expectations in terms of content quality," said Todd Biddle, Vice President, Video Product Line, Tektronix. "The right monitoring tools that can detect and diagnose problems affecting the quality of digital video transmission can make the difference in providing a satisfying viewing experience. The new monitoring capabilities in the WVR7100 and WVR6100 indicate system degradations to engineers before they become quality problems, reducing time and effort in fault detection, problem diagnosis and failure recovery."

Eye, Jitter and Cable Length Measurements

With the addition of the option EYE, the WVR7100 and WVR6100 can display Eye patterns in 3-Eye, 10-Eye (SD) or 20-Eye (HD) mode. The Tektronix FlexVu(TM) provides simultaneous display of Eye patterns in both 3-Eye and either 10-Eye or 20-Eye modes in separate tiles, allowing customers to view the physical layer status at a glance. The display includes numeric readouts of timing and alignment jitter values. Users can easily use the digital cursors to measure the amplitude; rise/fall time and rise/fall overshoot from the Eye pattern.

In addition to the Eye pattern display, option EYE also offers an SDI status display for quick evaluation of physical layer signal health that summarizes the SDI physical layer status including numeric jitter values, source signal level, cable loss and approximate cable length measurements. In monitoring applications, the instrument can detect jitter and signal strength fault conditions based on user-specified thresholds, and can generate alarms for immediate action or log these events for later inspection.

Support for Ancillary Data Conforming to the ARIB Standards

In Japan, ancillary data needs to conform to standards set by ARIB. These include ARIB STD-B37 (Closed Caption Data), ARIB STD-B39 (Inter-Stationary Control Data), ARIB STD-B35 (Trigger Signal Data), ARIB TR-B22 (Guidelines for Ancillary Data Transport) and ARIB TR-B23 (Guidelines for Inter-Stationary Control Data Transport). Both the WVR7100 and WVR6100 now provide support for the ARIB standards. A specialized ARIB data display allows more detailed examination of this information.

These enhanced data monitoring capabilities improve efficiency in diagnosing problems with ancillary data conforming to the ARIB standards and lower the probability of a quality or reliability problem caused by an undetected fault.

Availability

The new option EYE is now available for order, with shipments of the new firmware and option EYE expected to begin in July 2006. Customers can purchase current products and options now and add the Eye capability later with a field-installable upgrade.

The new ARIB data monitoring capabilities will be offered as standard in all new WVR7100 and WVR6100 Rasterizers when the new firmware becomes available. At that time, customers with previously purchased WVR7100 and WVR6100 models will be able to download the new ARIB data monitoring capabilities via a free firmware upgrade.

www.tektronix.com

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