With the 2024 NAB Show New York just around the corner, Radio World is asking exhibitors about their plans and expectations. Mike Pappas is the vice president of business development for Orban.
Radio World: What news will your company feature at the convention — which of your new products or services for radio will you highlight?
Mike Pappas: We will be showing the 5950 Super HiFi Edition, now with HLS Metadata decoding and Nielsen PPM encoding. This new, award-winning Optimod product includes Super Hi-Fi’s AI-powered programming and revolutionary HLS+ delivery technology, giving users the first-ever all-in-one product that replaces racks of playout equipment, audio processing, PPM encoding and metadata servers in a single 1U rack space.
We will also be showing the Orban Optimod 5750 HD. This version of our popular Optimod 5750 supports analog FM/HD-1 and adds HD-2 processing, giving users a lower-cost option for processing multiple HD channels.
RW: We reported that Peter Lee is set to retire after 24 years. What has that transition been like?
Pappas: Those are incredibly big shoes to fill. Peter has been such an integral part of Orban over the years, and we’ll certainly miss him. He has been fully engaged in making that transition smooth for both Orban and his customers.
RW: Is there any news on new hires/promotions?
Pappas: Orban Europe has been working hard on new hires and a reorganization of sales territories. Expect news on those efforts after the first of the year.
RW: Your Optimod 5950 with Super HiFi won the Radio World Best of Show award earlier this year, what feedback have you received from customers about the product?
Pappas: We have had lots of interest in using the HLS technology for everything from disaster recovery to STL replacement, to things we can’t talk about yet.
Just a few weeks ago we had a customer with a 5950 call us with an STL failure. We licensed the HLS decoder for their unit, and they are using an HLS stream while they repair the broken STL.
Using a computer industry open standard like HLS with the software-defined 5950/5750/Trio platform, we can provide an incredible amount of malleability. And with HLS, the metadata is encapsulated with the audio and is always perfectly synced.
RW: As we look ahead to the latter half of the year, what are your goals? What trends will you be keeping an eye on as we look to 2025?
Pappas: What we have seen with Super HiFi AI cloud-based playout has been incredible. In addition to employing our unparalleled processing power, users now have the power of AI-managed programming. This allows them to exactly determine what kind of content they want to play, when they want to play it, how often they want to play it and so on. It goes way beyond the standard automation options and can be easily done using any web browser. This has the potential to revolutionize the industry.
We will continue to spend more time with end-users to understand their requirements and how we can respond to that. They are our best resource for determining future product plans.
Orban booth: 1137
