Chyron Corporation

Chyron Corporation

Type	Public
Genre	Broadcasting
Founded	1966
Headquarters	Melville, NY, USA
Key people	Michael Wellesley-Wesley, President and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Kieliszak, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Bonnie Barclay, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Peter Morrone, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Product Management
Revenue	Investor Relations
Employees	122 (2011)
Website	www.chyron.com

The Chyron Corporation (NASDAQ: CHYR) is a Melville, N.Y.-based company that develops products and services for digital broadcast graphics creation. The company’s solutions, which include the AXIS Graphics online content creation software and order management system and a range of on-air graphics systems, clip servers, channel branding, and graphics asset management solutions, have earned multiple Emmy® Awards and are in use at broadcast and media facilities worldwide.

Company history

In the early 1970s, the name was changed to Systems Resources Corporation and was located in Plainview, NY only a few miles from the company's present location in Melville. They began manufacturing dot-matrix (5x7) character generators (CG) for airport arrival and departure time displays. They also began manufacturing a clean-looking fixed-font (rom based) CG sold as the Chiron I. It featured the ability to record and retrieve lower thirds and full page text displays for news departments of TV stations as an alternative to art cards, slides or scrolling black felt.

As the newly developed IBM and Memorex 8" floppy disk drives were not yet available for OEM purchase, the company built their own multi-track magnetic storage device, the VidiLoop, based on a two foot loop of computer tape in a thick clear plastic housing. On the Chiron 1 it was used solely for title storage. It was also used on a few early Chiron IIs, but due to increased storage requirements was replaced by Shugart SA901 8" floppy drives as soon as they were available.

The Chiron II was an ambitious CG project that featured up to six loadable fonts (typefaces) with, for the time, very high video resolution. The display circuits were running so fast (27ns) that the fastest ICs available were used and had to be hand selected during manufacture as not all samples were up to par.

It was also their first unit to incorporate a 16-bit mini-computer known as the DataMate-70. That processor's code base was used in the Chyron IV and 4100 series systems, which were the work horses of the mobile sports graphics industry from the late 1970s through most of the 1980s. Programs and fonts were loaded from loop or disk into computer style magnetic core memory. As the font data access needed to be done quicker than a single core memory could achieve, four core boards were used in parallel to provide faster access. It was also the first CG that had non-monospaced fonts with adjustable inter-row and inter-character spacing.

All of that capability came at a cost too dear for many small market TV stations, and so a spin-off of a project for NBC became the Chiron III (later IIIB); a less capable system that was adequate for many TV news departments was developed and sold. It became the first mobile graphics systems of ABC Sports under Roone Arledge. It was he who pushed the increased use of graphics in sports to what it is today; a significant portion of live sports entertainment. The III's success provided the impetus for the Chyron IV, which was a modernized and reduced package size Chyron II, suitable for mobile use. It quickly replaced the Chyron IIIs as the dominant sports graphics system.

Around 1975 there was an added investor who would provide much needed capital. The reorganization plan included a name change to capitalize on the product's name recognition. The name Chiron was already registered in California, so by changing the i to a y they were able to keep the familiar sounding name and became initially Chyron Telesystems and later still Chyron, Corp.

Chyron Corp. is the leading hardware manufacturer and software designer of 2D and 3D broadcast character generators in North America. Chyron’s leading character generator application is Lyric (as of 2009, Lyric Pro 7) which can produce static and animated graphics for real-time playback to air. Lyric can manage and animate 2D and 3D elements produced in other composting programs like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effect, Autodesk 3DS Max, etc.

Products

BlueNet™

Introduced at NAB 2011, BlueNet is Chyron’s comprehensive solution that fully addresses broadcasters’ requirements for streamlined end-to-end graphics workflows. BlueNet leverages Chyron’s suite of graphics tools for ordering and graphics asset management, collaborative graphics creation, and real-time playout. Integration with AXIS, Chyron’s cloud-based services offering, extends the power of BlueNet workflows to speed even the most sophisticated graphics to air.

AXIS Graphics Online Content Creation

Chyron’s AXIS Graphics platform facilitates graphics creation for users across a broadcast operation — from reporters to production assistants to news producers. The customizable system, which integrates with the broadcaster’s existing or Chyron-based workflow, offers services including high-resolution maps, 3D charts, financial quotes, and tools for topical news graphics creation. To reduce the time required to create graphics, AXIS provides broadcast production staff with prebuilt templates suited for outlets such as websites, mobile devices, and print publications.

HyperX^3.1 On-Air Graphics System

Introduced in 2011, the HyperX^3.1 is the newest version of Chyron’s on-air graphics system. Like its predecessors, the HyperX^3.1 provides creation-to-playout capability and enables real-time 2D/3D animation for applications including live sports channels, news stations, and outside broadcast productions. The system is scalable to two independent channels and incorporates optional DVEs, clips, and Chyron’s Lyric PRO 8 graphics creation and playout software.

Lyric PRO 8 Graphics Creation Software

Chyron’s Lyric PRO 8 graphics creation and playout package allows users to manage and animate 2D and 3D elements from other graphics applications while providing its own motion graphics feature set and 3D text rendering engine. The software provides precise control over every transition and effect through adjustments already familiar to users of 3D creation tools. Lyric PRO 8 features native support for stereoscopic 3D, scriptless transitions, and touch screen enabled graphics, as well as newly introduced Web-enabled control over Lyric messages and playout.

Channel Box² Branding and Promo System

The Chyron Channel Box² channel branding system features 2D/3D design with a complete data acquisition toolset for all branding applications. Built on Chyron’s Lyric graphics software and equipped with full language support, Channel Box² allows users to access any data — RSS feeds, traffic, financial, weather, elections, tickers, promos, snipes, and more — and publish it on-air anywhere, anytime.

Terminology

In the United States the graphics (e.g., lower thirds) generated by character generators, are typically known as Chyrons, whether the equipment is made by Chyron Corporation or not.

Financial data

Chyron Corporation’s common stock trades on the NASDAQ (Global Market) under the symbol CHYR.

External links

• Official Site

References