Learn more about these products and why they were chosen by the judges in the June NAB wrap-up issue.

NAB2007 Attendance is Third Largest Ever
Las Vegas - Apr 18, 2007 - According to the NAB's pre-show and on-site registration figures, total registered attendance for NAB2007 is 108,232. That's an increase from NAB2006, when 105,046 people attended the convention. International attendance was up from 25,537 at the 2006 convention to 26,824 at this year's convention.

Final registration data will be available following the show.

Crystal Radio Award Winners Announced at NAB2007
Las Vegas - Apr 17, 2007 - The 10 winners of the NAB Crystal Radio Awards were recognized at the NAB Radio Luncheon at NAB2007, held Wednesday, April 17. The 10 winners are as follows:

• KBHP-FM Bemidiji, MN
• KHHT-FM Los Angeles
• KLGR-AM Redwood Falls, MN
• KOA-AM Denver
• KSTP-FM St. Paul
• KTAR-AM Phoenix
• WFYR-FM Peoria, IL
• WJJY-FM Brainerd, MN
• WTAM-AM Cleveland
• WUSL-FM Philadelphia

The NAB Crystal Radio Awards recognize radio stations for their outstanding year-round commitment to community service.

NDS Radioguard Provides Conditional Access for HD Radio
Las Vegas - Apr 16, 2007 - NDS has debuted NDS Radioguard, the first conditional access system for HD Radio. With the announcement of the product comes the news that NDS Radioguard has been chosen by Ibiquity to protect digital content transmitted over HD Radio. Ibiquity will embed the NDS technology into its chipsets moving forward.

NDS Radioguard in the HD radio chipsets will allow broadcasters to offer pay-per-listen options for live concerts and events, opt-in events sponsored by advertisers and private channels for specific needs.

The conditional access system is used to scramble the signal and then entitle specific receivers to decode that signal. To do this, all HD Radio receivers will need to be addressable, which is a step that it now being implemented for future receivers. The decoding capability is being introduced in two steps. By September 2007, NDS will have a security chip available that will add the access capability to the existing HD Radio chipset. By April 2008, NDS and Ibiquity expect to have the capability imbedded within the HD Radio chipset.

The system has undergone field trials that were transmitted via WUSF-FM, Tampa. The test began on March 18 and were a cooperative effort between the station, the International Association of Audio Information Services, Ibiquity, Harris and NPR Labs. According to NDS, the tests went well and showed that receivers could be entitled to receive the reading service for the blind programming.

NDS technology is currently in use in more than 70 million TV set-top boxes around the world. This technology has been adapted into Radioguard.

NDS is exhibiting in booth N7137 at NAB2007, and the system will also be shown in the Broadcast Electronics and Harris booths.

DG Fast Channel to Acquire Point.360's Advertising Distribution
Dallas - Apr 16, 2007 - DG Fast Channel, a provider of digital media services to the advertising and broadcast industries, has entered into definitive agreements with Point.360 to acquire Point.360's ads distribution operations. The acquisition will be accomplished via an exchange offer for all outstanding shares of Point.360 common stock. The total consideration for the overall transaction is about $46 million.

BE, MDO UK Partner on IP STL
Quincy, IL - Apr 16, 2007 - Broadcast Electronics (BE) unveiled its new studio-to-transmitter product for live audio over IP networks. The Audio TX STL-IP is manufactured by MDO UK Broadcast, a codec and media delivery company in the UK, and is offered in the United States exclusively through Broadcast Electronics. The STL unit is capable of receiving and sending audio using point-to-point UDP or TCP/IP and point-to-multipoint UDP multicast networks, making it an affordable choice for distribution of live or shared programming for radio station groups.

In addition to Audio TX STL-IP, BE offers the Big Pipe broadband transport for wideband, multi-path applications.

Arrakis Forms New Company: Graham Studios
Loveland, CO - Apr 19, 2007 - Arrakis Systems, a manufacturer of radio furniture, has created a new, independent company, called Graham Studios, for its wood products. The new company wil be owned and managed by Arrakis' former vice president of broadcast sales, Rod Graham. Graham Studios will be co-located at the Arrakis facility in Loveland, CO.

Linear Acoustic, Telos Merge
Las Vegas - Apr 17, 2007 - Linear Acoustic, an audio distributing and processing company for multichannel TV sound, has become a member of the Telos Group. Terms of the merger were not disclosed. Linear Acoustic joins Axia, Omnia and Telos as the fourth member of this partnership.

51 Vehicle Models to Offer HD Radio by 2009
Las Vegas - Apr 17, 2007 - Nine brands and 51 models of vehicles will offer HD Radio receivers in the next two years, according to Jeff McGannon, vice president, OEM business development, for Ibiquity Digital. BMW, Hyundai and Jaguar have already announced commitments to HD Radio technology in the past four months. BMW is extending its factory-installed HD Radio receiver option across its entire product lineup. And at the recent New York International Automobile Show Hyundai and Jaguar used the spotlight of the show to tout the addition of an HD Radio receiver option in select new models.

Sales Call The Washington-based Library of Congress has acquired several Pyramix DAWs, each built around a Merging Mykerinos MB5 card with an AES-EBU digital output daughterboard. Washington's National Gallery of Art has also installed a Pyramix for use by the gallery's audio-visual staff. The BBC, BSky B and Capital Radio in the UK; NHK Tokyo and SBS South Korea in Asia; Al Jazeera in the Middle East; AFTRS Sydney Radio and AAP in Australia; and Danish Broadcasting, NRK Norway and Radio France in Europe, are using HHB's Flash Mic portable recording device. Prairie Public Broadcasting has purchased Harris HD Radio transmitters for its eight FM radio stations serving North Dakota. Harris also will provide its Flexstar family of HD Radio products at the eight stations for multicasting.

Morgan Retires as Chairman of NRSC
Las Vegas - Apr 14, 2007 - Charles T. Morgan, former senior VP of engineering for Susquehanna Radio, announced his retirement as chairman of the National Radio Systems Committee (NRSC), a technical standards-setting body co-sponsored by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). Morgan has been at the helm of the NRSC for more than 20 years. During his tenure, the NRSC developed a series of AM broadcast standards to improve the quality of AM radio, the RBDS standard and the in-band/on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcasting standard. Although he will no longer serve as chairman, Morgan will remain active in the committee and its subcommittees.

Replacing Morgan as chairman will be Milford K. Smith, Jr., vice president radio engineering for Greater Media. Smith will leave his position as cochairman of the NRSC's Digital Radio Broadcasting (DRB) subcommittee, a position he held for the last decade, and from which he, along with cochairman Michael Bergman of Kenwood, oversaw the development of the NRSC-5-A digital radio broadcasting standard.

Andy Laird, vice president and chief technology officer for Journal Broadcast Group, will replace Smith as co-chair of the DRB Subcommittee. Laird has been an active member of the NRSC for more than a decade, and was previously the chairman of the DAB (now DRB) Subcommittee's Test Guidelines Working Group and Test Procedures Working Group that were responsible for developing the test procedures used in the NRSC's evaluation of IBOC digital radio.

Gordoni, Buffaloe Join Jampro's Sales Team
Sacramento, CA - Apr 19, 2007 - Jampro has hired Steve Gordoni to the position of domestic sales manager. John Buffaloe has also joined Jampro in domestic sales.

Gordoni comes to Jampro with more than 30 years of experience in broadcast and audio system equipment sales. Prior to joining Jampro, Gordoni served as North American sales manager for Audemat-Aztec and Orban/CRL, and as area sales manager for Broadcast Electronics.

Buffaloe also brings more than 30 years of broadcast experience to Jampro. Buffaloe has served as a DJ, production manager, operations manager and chief engineer. He spent 20 years in San Diego as engineering manager for Jefferson-Pilot.

Ibiquity Add Dadian as Broadcast Sales Manager
Columbia, MD - Apr 16, 2007 - Ibiquity Digital has hired Paul Dadian as broadcast sales manager. Dadian will work with mid-tier groups and independent station owners as they upgrade to the HD Radio system. He is the third new hire by the Ibiquity broadcast team in the past six months.

Dadian will report to Scott Stull, vice president of business development. Dadian will work to extend the reach of HD Radio technology, overseeing Ibiquity's new incentive program that was announced in February and targets mid-tier broadcasters and mid-sized markets.

Most recently, Dadian was the broadcast sales supervisor at Harris where he oversaw Harris' National Broadcast Call Center in Mason, OH. He also managed national mid-market accounts for Harris where, among his other responsibilities, he coordinated HD Radio training seminars. Previously, he was a business partner at Rcartz, a sports production TV company supplying utility vehicles and personnel to TV and radio networks throughout North America. Dadian began his tech career at CC Electro Sales where he worked as a manufacturer representative.

Audioscience, Axia Partnership Produces Livewire Adapter
Newcastle, DE - Apr 11, 2007 - Audioscience and Axia Audio announced a partnership in January of this year. Four months later, Audioscience will debut the results of that venture at NAB2007; the ASI6585 Axia Livewire PCI adapter.

The ASI6585 merges Axia's Livewire with audio processing in one adapter. Using a Texas Instruments onboard floating-point DSP with Axia Livewire networked audio allows the ASI6585 to simultaneously play eight streams of audio that can be mixed to eight stereo outputs, and record eight audio streams fed from eight stereo inputs, over switched Ethernet. The feature set of the ASI6585 extends to MRX multi-rate mixing, MPEG Layer 2 and 3 encoding and decoding and TSX time scaling. Two streams are available for SSX multichannel record and playback.

WZLX is On-air with MPEG Surround
Boston - Apr 16, 2007 - WZLX Boston launched its 5.1 surround service this week on the station's main HD Radio channel. The station is using the MPEG Surround system provided by Fraunhofer and Telos Systems.

It was announced at NAB2006 that the station would implement this surround system. The station uses an Axia Audio routing system to handle the multi-channel studio infrastructure. According to Telos, receiver manufacturers Bose, Boston Acoustics and Tivoli are monitoring and evaluating the WZLX broadcasts on prototype receivers provided by Fraunhofer.

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