| Comrex Corporation | |
| Type: | Private (employee-owned) |
| Industry: | Broadcasting |
| Founder: | John Cheney |
| Key People: | Tom Hartnett, Kris Bobo Specht (directors) |
| Hq Location City: | Devens, Massachusetts |
| Hq Location Country: | United States |
Comrex is an American corporation that designs and manufactures equipment for radio and television broadcasting.
Comrex was founded in 1961 by John Cheney, a broadcast engineer. His mission, as outlined in Comrex's inaugural press release, is "to apply advanced state of the art knowledge and techniques to the production of high quality, practical equipment which can be operated by non-technical personnel.”
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Comrex developed audio products for the television market. In 1968, founder John Cheney developed Models 7035 and 7040 receivers for wireless microphone systems. In 1973, the 450 RA/TA wireless microphone system, designed for TV news, is the first to enable reporters to move more than 1000 feet from the camera. In 1975, The Comrex wireless cue system, composed of the CTA cue transmitter and the CRA (now LPQRA) receiver, enables field reporters and producers to hear production audio and instructions, without a wired connection to a news van.
From the late 1970s onward, Comrex began building products for remote radio broadcasters:
From 1991 to 2000, Comrex released a series of ISDN codecs.
In 2006, Cheney's technical successor Tom Hartnett, in partnership with company co-director Kristine Bobo Specht, developed BRIC (Broadcast Reliable Internet Codec) technology. A full-featured suite of tools, BRIC incorporated sophisticated jitter buffers and proprietary algorithms to provide better quality audio over inherently unstable networks, like the public internet.
With BRIC in place, Comrex released the ACCESS codec in 2006. ACCESS was distinguished from its competitors by the hand-held design of the portable unit. Due to this form factor, and to the variety of networks on which it could function, ACCESS did not require the stationary set-up of the codecs that preceded it.[1] [2]
BRIC technology was also used to develop the BRIC-Link. An IP codec, BRIC-Link was intended for use as an STL or in other point-to-point applications. Since its introduction in 2009, it has been used widely in both radio and television by many organizations, including the NBA.[3]
In 2015, the BRIC-Link II, an updated version of the BRIC-Link, was introduced.
In 2023, Comrex introduced BRIC-Link III at the NAB 2022 show. BRIC-Link III has CrossLock VPN technology.[4]
In 2012, Comrex adapted BRIC technology to transport video as well as audio.[5] The resulting product, named LiveShot, could send video and audio bidirectionally over IP networks (including Wi-Fi and 3G/4G), with less than 500 milliseconds of delay. Weighing only 3 pounds, LiveShot was designed for news crews and ENG reporters who needed lightweight equipment.
In the years that followed, LiveShot was updated with CrossLock technology, a method of network bonding in which a VPN is established between the transmitting and receiving units. CrossLock greatly improved LiveShot's broadcasting reliability, especially over unstable IP networks. LiveShot's price-point, along with its versatility, have made it popular with small stations, educational organizations, and government facilities.