Cobalt Digital Inc. headed home from NAB with four more awards to add to its collection. The designer and manufacturer of edge devices for live video production and master control, and a founding partner in the openGear® initiative, received two Product of the Year awards from NAB as well as two Best of Show awards from Future; one from Next TV and the other from TVB Europe. The awards – for a variety of products – represent the scope of Cobalt’s reach to all segments of a market that spans from Broadcast to Streaming to Pro AV and hits every corner of the globe.
“Cobalt celebrated our 25th anniversary at NAB and these four awards are a true indicator of how the company has grown in size and technology over the years,” said Chris Shaw, COO. “These four bring us to a total of about 40 earned since we were established in 1997 – we won our first the very same year the company launched – and it’s especially meaningful that we received so many at our first major in-person industry event since 2019. We’re thrilled to be back with our colleagues and honored that our latest solutions have been recognized for their innovation by both NAB and Future judges.”
Cobalt’s Compression Line (9992-ENC and 9992-DEC products) was a double winner in the 2022 NAB Show Product of the Year Awards being recognized to offer the industry’s first Synchronized Multi-Stream Decoding with RIST capability in the Remote Production category and also by its ability to offer Multi-Link RIST in Seamless Switching Mode in the IT Networking/Infrastructure & Security category. This official awards program recognizes the most significant and promising new products and technologies showcased by corporate partners of NAB Show.
NAB Show Product of the Year Award Winners were selected by a panel of industry experts in 15 categories and announced in a live awards ceremony at NAB Show on April 26. To be eligible for an award, nominated products had to come from companies exhibiting at the 2022 NAB Show and delivered within the 2022 calendar year.
“The 2022 NAB Show Product of the Year Awards honor innovative breakthroughs that will change the way the media and entertainment industry creates, connects and capitalizes content,” said NAB Executive Vice President of Global Connections and Events Chris Brown. “We congratulate Cobalt Digital on these awards and their potential to help storytellers meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.”
Cobalt also took home two awards from Future brands. The Company’s Multi-link video transport solution that uses RIST and is powered by its 9992-ENC encoder and 9992-DEC decoder was named Best of Show by Next TV, and its 9904-UDX-4K with +HDR-TCHCLR-4K real-time intelligent HDR conversion powered by ‘Advanced by Technicolor’ received the same honor from its sister publication – TVB Europe.
The Future awards are judged by a panel of industry experts on the criteria of innovation, feature set, cost efficiency and performance in serving the industry. The awards recognize those outstanding products and solutions from the technology and media industries exhibited at this year’s NAB show in Las Vegas, with entries being evaluated for value, innovation, feature set, ease of use and capabilities.
According to the editorial team at Future, “With live events coming back to the forefront and becoming commonplace again, this year’s Best of Show awards were expected to be more competitive than ever – and it didn’t disappoint.
“The amount of entries matched the positive attendance at this year’s show and selecting the winners proved to be challenging. Those who have won can know that their solution was truly outstanding and impressed our judges, as all entries received were of a high-level.”
