Broadcast Tech & Engineering News – NAB Show Product of the Year winners announced

The NAB Show Product of the Year Awards were announced at NAB Show New York, during a virtual Product of the Year Awards celebration. The awards recognize the most significant and promising new products and technologies being showcased for the first time. New this year, winners comprise exhibiting companies from both NAB Show and NAB Show New York. Among the winners are Ross Video, which earned two awards for its Ross Graphite PPC (Portable Production Centre) in both the Graphics, Editing, VXF, Switchers and Remote Editing categories. Tieline the Codec Company was recognized for Gateway in the Hardware Infrastructure category, while Blackmagic Design was named Best Overall Winner in the Acquisition Category for its Ursa Mini Pro 12k. Find the full list of winners, here.

NexTech AR Solutions, a Vancouver-based augmented reality solution for eCommerce, AR-enhanced video conferencing and virtual events, acquired the AiRShow app from TRICK 3D earlier this month and has now announced it will have in-app purchases and ticketing capabilities beginning in early November. The AiRShow application has the ability to turn artists or hosts into ‘live’ holograms that you can watch performances from and interact with in your living room. Available to download on iTunes and Google Play Store, NexTech plans to leverage the AiRShow technology for its virtual events platform InfernoAR as well as for its AR eCommerce business. AiRShow marks the company’s seventh acquisition and third AR application which continues to tie together its augmented reality (AR) offerings with the goal of creating a complete AR ecosystem.

Sophi.io, The Globe and Mail’s artificial intelligence-based automation and prediction engine, has won the Online Journalism Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism, handed out by the Online News Association (ONA). Sophi is an artificial-intelligence system that helps publishers identify their most valuable content. Using natural language processing, its predictive capabilities help publishers discern which content to paywall to maximize subscription revenue. Sophi Automation also places 99% of the content on The Globe and Mail’s digital pages, including its homepage and section pages, and is now also being used for print laydown. Sophi was previously recognized with the 2020 North American Digital Media Award by The World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in the category of Best Digital News Start-up.