BHV’s managing director, Julian Hiorns, and CTO, Bill Garrett, explain how the company absorbed “the risk and the worry” of its clients during the pandemic, and why they’re seeing a growing need for outsourced innovation and development in the industry.
What impact has the pandemic and its continuing aftereffects had on the company’s approach to R&D and product development?
BHV offers R&D as a service, providing vendors with a reliable resource for building ground-breaking product portfolios. The pandemic threw us into high gear with vendors having to deal with lockdowns, supply chain issues and labour shortages. Clients brought us their ideas or even seeds of an idea, and we turned them into products built on the very latest proven technologies in the industry. We absorbed the risk and worry, and they reaped the rewards of bringing cutting-edge solutions to market, some of which earned them patents.
What are the biggest challenges you are facing in R&D and product development/deployment in the current landscape?
One of the major challenges has been an unprecedented gearing of hardware choices to availability due to procurement issues. Thankfully, the situation has eased somewhat over the past year, but supplies are still very uneven; we always keep one eye firmly on items with long lead times when designing a new product!
Where do you see the most opportune areas for innovation in your area of the market, and what tech/solutions will drive that development?
There is a growing need for outsourced innovation and development. BHV leverages its own skill base, bringing high-end electronic design and turnkey embedded engineering services to large brands seeking agility, or small players needing capability in video, streaming and production sectors. The company offers clients a multi-phased approach to product development that includes market assessment, technology evaluation, an intelligently engineered product design and delivery of a complete turnkey solution without breaking the bank.
What are you working on currently that excites you as a product team, and what can we expect to see at IBC 2023?
We are promoting our own unique portfolio of hardware and software technologies to provide embedded engineering solutions available in ASIC, FPGA and software-defined delivery for video, wireless and control applications. We also maintain a substantial inventory of components enabling completed software and hardware solutions to be integrated quickly, avoiding supply chain delays and missed deadlines.
At IBC we are demonstrating our significantly upgraded TV studio in a chip solution that now includes 4K 60 rendering and image manipulation. We will also present a range of wireless and control technologies.
