November 23, 2020 — Nanjing, China: Magewell is proud to announce that the company’s 4K Pro Convert NDI ^® encoders have been chosen by online video professionals as winners of a 2020 Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Award. The low-latency converters, which enable users to easily and reliably bring traditional HDMI or SDI video signals into IP-based media workflows, were honored in the ‘Hardware Input Devices for Live Production’ category.

Magewell’s remarkably intuitive Ultra Stream live streaming encoders were also recognized in this year’s Readers’ Choice Awards as a runner-up in the‘Single or Dual-Stream Encoding Appliances’ category.

Regarded as one of the most prestigious accolades in its field, the Readers’ Choice Awards are held annually by Streaming Media magazine to recognize the best online video solutions as independently judged by end users and readers, rather than by the publication’s staff. More than 25,000 votes were cast this year across 26 categories that ran the gamut from analytics to webcasting and everything in between. 

“The Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards is the first and still the only awards program where the winners are chosen by the people who matter most—the end-users who use these products and services every day,” said Streaming Media Vice President and Publisher Joel Unickow. “This is not a pay-to-play awards program, like so many others are. This is the most honest view of the industry, with no committee or panel of judges.”

Leveraging NewTek’s popular NDI technology, Pro Convert encoders seamlessly connect users’ existing equipment investments into next-generation, IP-based production, remote contribution, and distribution workflows. Two compact Pro Convert encoder models ingest 4K Ultra HD signals at full 60 frames per second and encode them to full NDI streams. The Pro Convert HDMI 4K Plus features an HDMI 2.0 input interface, while the Pro Convert 12G SDI 4K Plus brings in 4K content via single-link, 12Gbps SDI. Both models offer automatic input format detection for plug-and-play ease of use, with a wide-range of advanced features ideal for live production applications.

“Streaming Media takes the pulse of the online video industry a few ways every year, including research reports and our expert-filled conferences, but our Readers’ Choice Awards give us the best insight into which products and services have found favor with the people who matter most—the technologists and engineers in the trenches,” said Streaming Media Editor-in-Chief and Vice President Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen. “If you want to know who’s leading the way from a technology standpoint, there’s no better indicator than these awards. Congratulations to the winners and finalists, the companies that are leading the way with technical innovation and a passion for making streaming video the best it can be.”

“The Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards mean a lot to our company and our team, as they are chosen by the content creators and video professionals that we design our products to serve,” said Nick Ma, CEO and CTO at Magewell. “The win for our Pro Convert 4K NDI encoders and finalist selection for our Ultra Stream product are testaments to not only the capabilities of our solutions, but also our focus on aligning our innovations with customers’ needs. Thank you to everyone who voted for us.”