NAB 2019 Reflections: VITEC's Kevin Ancelin on Shaping Company's Broadcast-Contribution Roadmap The founder of T-21 Technologies recently joined VITEC after his companys acquisition By Karen Hogan Ketchum, Director of Production
Wednesday, May 1, 2019 - 10:51 am
Print This Story
Earlier this year, VITEC - a leader in advanced video encoding and streaming solutions - acquired T-21 Technologies, which provides OTT streaming media solutions for media operations, broadcasters, and content owners worldwide. As a result of the acquisition, T-21 Technologies founder - and industry veteran - Kevin Ancelin joins the VITEC team as VP of worldwide broadcast sales; a move that VITEC hopes will help the company compete in the broadcast contribution market.
SVG sat down with Ancelin at NAB 2019 to discuss his company's acquisition, how he plans to shape VITEC's broadcast roadmap moving forward, and what he wants the industry to know about the new broadcast-focused VITEC.
Tell me about VITEC's acquisition of T-21 Technologies.
W e closed on January 14, [but] essentially, it started back at IBC. I've known [VITEC CEP] Philippe Wetzel for over 20 years, and I've always had great respect for his company and what he's done. He approached me at IBC and said, I want you to come to France and meet my team. We didn't especially discuss the possibility of acquiring T21 or merging, but I knew exactly what he wanted, so when I got to France we all sat down and talked and he was very straight, succinct, and to the point. [He said,] we want you to come and work for us to help us build a broadcast strategy.'
Kevin Ancelin
VITEC has core technology that is extraordinary - codecs that we develop for medical, military, industrial applications, surveillance, police stations, oil and gas, all kinds of things. These codecs can be used in broadcast, too, and although VITEC has been a longstanding member with SVG with their sports group, we've never really been a player in the contribution space. So we talked for a couple of days, and then we got moving on the due diligence, and we got serious [about the acquisition] around the holidays.
The play is very simple: we are going to become a substantial player in the broadcast contribution segment. Certainly, we're not going to become that next month, [but] we've already kickstarted projects that will be feeding into the contribution segment primarily focused on HEVC - our core technology. We are an AVC company as well, but we consider that to be legacy technology.
So we all got together at our annual sales kick off in January, and the product managers and I had been pitching [Ross Video's] openGear. [We were] trying to stress to the team that if you have a car, you need to put it in the garage. You have a dog, the dog needs a dog house. Encoder cards need a frame. But just because we make the encoder cards, does that mean we need to make the frame? No. And they bought in - hook, line, and sinker - and here we are. We've announced our first card on openGear, and we will be shipping our MGW Ace Decoder for the openGear platform starting in June. The density is 10 channels of decoding and two rack spaces; it's got 12-gig SDI, it can be frame-synced using the gen-lock input on the chassis itself, so all the cards have the same presentation time so you can feed into chromakeyers, FX systems, etc. It does 16 channels of audio, it does HEVC and AVC, 420 and 422, 8-bit and 10-bit, so the HEVC 422 10-bit decoding attribute of the Ace Decoder on openGear, it's unique. I believe we are the first in the broadcast space.
We are - make no mistake - entering that market at the tier 1 level as a decoder company. That's not to say we don't have encoders - we do, we have fantastic encoders - but there are some form-factor issues, some limitations in the software, we have a little longer runway that we need to go down to get our Ace Encoder released in openGear. Today, you can buy the Ace Encoder, it is shipping, and - this is a very important feature of the VITEC point-to-point solution - our Ace Encoder to our Ace Decoder can deliver glass-to-glass presentation in 16 milliseconds, which is less than one frame of video. #zerolatency
The T-21 team is continuing to work with VITEC R&D, and I'm the VP of worldwide broadcast sales. I'm building strategy, I'm helping product understand what the market requirements are, and I'm also running sales in North America. I'd like to make a really big commitment in Latin America as soon as I can too because there's so much business there.
You mentioned that the MGW Ace Decoder - VITEC's first broadcast product - will be released a little later this year. What are VITEC's other goals moving forward, as you further explore the broadcast market?
One of the biggest things were seeing now is everybody wants low latency; it's such a significant attribute of these products. You can do low latency with really poor quality - it is an inverted relationship; the lower the latency, traditionally, the poorer the quality because of the way the flow control is managed. Well, we have over 20 codec engineers at VITEC - over 100 engineers total but 20 on codec - so they've been able to refine the codecs and both encode and decode to deliver the low delay. It is my belief in the HD world that we can replace J2K links and have one tenth of the bandwidth required for J2K - most of those are running around 120 megabits - we can do that at 10-12 megabits and it looks the same. Great taste, less filling. 16 channels of audio, whereas JPEG doesn't encode the audio - it takes 20 megabits to pass the audio alone on J2K systems - we'll do that in 500 kilabits or something like that, so your video and audio 12 megabit link is equivalent to the v
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
NAB 2019 Reflections: VITEC's Kevin Ancelin on Shaping Company's Broadcast-Contribution Roadmap The founder of T-21 Technologies recently joined VITEC after his companys acquisition By Karen Hogan Ketchum, Director of Production 
