This year, Broadcast Engineering offered unprecedented coverage of the NAB Show:
NAB Update e-newsletter: We send the latest announcements from the NAB and companies to your inbox each week for 10 weeks leading up to the show and for five weeks after the show.
Broadcast Engineering TV: We captured all the action. Watch product demos, key speeches and more.
BE@NAB blog: We gave you our personal take on events and new product announcements, including more than 20 audio interviews.
Broadcast Engineering Show Portal Direct from NAB: The place to find all things NAB, pulling content from every corner of our Web site, including e-newsletters, blogs, Broadcast Engineering TV, The Briefing Room and more.
Pick Hits: Our independent judges scoured the show floor the best and brightest of the new offerings at the show and selected 40 winners.
The Briefing Room: Get the company’s official press release on new products that they released during NAB season.
IPTV Pavilion: Here exhibitors showcased their latest products and services centered on content distribution and delivery. The IPTV Pavilion and it’s Web portal and e-newsletter focused on the distribution and delivery of IPTV services, uniting content and new technology to provide innovative solutions to telecom organizations.
And there’s more to come. It isn’t yet May, and I’m already looking forward to our June issue of the magazine. In it we’ll have our NAB wrap-up — filled to the brim with in depth reviews of the latest technology trends and new products announced at the show, including, of course, details on the Pick Hit winners.
My blogging photog friends who Broadcast Engineering features on the BE-Roll were out in full force on the NAB show floor taking video. Here are a two clips that they posted to b-roll.net, an onling photog group: more
My last day at the show, Thursday, was more relaxed without back-to-back prearranged meetings, so I had a chance to wander round, seeing new products. Most impressive was the new video monitor from Barco. Although still in the design stage, the pictures were stunning. Both Barco and Sony have shown that LCDs can be used to assess picture quality without distortions added by the display. Although we may mourn the passing of the CRT, the reality is that the broadcast sector represents such a small proportion of display device that it is no longer economic to manufacture the tubes.
The Barco and Sony displays are not those you would buy in the local computer store. For a start they have a 10-bit drive, rather than the eight- or even six-bit displays in consumer gear. Without this, reproduction of blacks is poor, and certainly inadequate for grading. The other differences are LED backlights rather than cold cathode for controlled color gamuts, and 120Hz refresh to minimize the motion artefacts caused by the sample and hold of LCDs.
Apple and Avid did not have booths, but I had the opportunity for a briefing on Final Cut Server. Digital asset management has been a special interest to me since the turn of the century. Back then you needed deep pockets to set up a system, $5M was not uncommon for the software, servers and an enterprise database. Add to that the running costs, on-site database administrators, support licenses.
Apple’s offering starts at a thousand bucks. OK it’s for 10 concurrent seats, but for a local station that is just what they need to manage P2 or XDCAM media. It will be interesting to watch the takeup of this product, and whether we will see competition. It’s long been my view that file-based production demands DAM, but for many it has been unaffordable. Such products make clear the advantages of file-based production over tape. It won’t be long before young folks entering the business will understand “tape” to be data tape, and videotape will join the audio cassette as a historical curiosity.
You’ll be hard pressed to find anyone not pleased that today is the last day of this year’s NAB show. Not that the show was bad or anything. It’s just that the intensity needed to bring off such a monumental event wears on participants.
This year’s show attendance fell by 6,000 to just over 105,000. That’s down from last year’s 111,000—if you believe the numbers. Me, I just ask the cabbies. They always seem to know the real attendance figures.
Attendees may not be as tired as exhibitors. But remember that vendors haven’t just been here since Monday, or for four days. Most arrived much earlier to set up booths, attend meetings and coordinate a list of activities. Then there’s the issue of booth set up and tear down. Most attendees have never seen anything but a finished show floor. more
At the Tektronix NAB2008 booth, the company introduced a 6lb. HD waveform monitor designed for stations launching actual high-def electronic news gathering operations.
The company developed the WFM 5000 after listening to its customers who needed a basic monitoring device that would satisfy the need to maintain the level of quality control over field acquisition they’ve grown to expect after years of SD newsgathering at a price that would not weigh heavily on their budgets, said the company’s John Hammerstrom. The WFM 5000 has a list price of less than $7000.
Besides offering a basic HD waveform monitoring function, the WFM 5000 also can be used as an HD vectorscope, picture monitor and status display for video and audio. It supports audio monitoring for 16 embedded channels of audio and one discrete AES pair and can be mounted to a tripod or atop a camera. At the booth, Tektronix showed the new waveform monitor affixed to a camera mount atop a camera as the unit might be used in real-life shooting situations.
According to Hammerstrom, the company has received thousands of requests from customers for an HD waveform monitor that would allow them to remain competitive with other stations in town without exceeding their HD infrastructure budgets.
There’s always one question asked in any conversation an editor has with an NAB exhibitor, “So, what have you seen that’s new?”
This year, my answer was “Not much.”
That’s not to say companies haven’t introduced new, even innovative, products at this year’s show. It’s just that in some years, there are one or two things where everybody says, “You have to go see this.” Last year and this year, I did not hear that phrase. more
The Las Vegas Convention Center is undergoing (another) renovation, which will impact next year’s NAB convention. Stand by for construction signs, dust, noise and logistical problems.
What’s interesting from this editor’s viewpoint is that the company in charge of the electrical, mechanical, plumbing for the upcoming LVCC renovation is based in Broadcast Engineering’s home base, Kansas City.
The firm of Henderson Engineers will serve as the Engineer of Record for the mechanical, electrical and plumbing portion for the project. The $890 million LVCC renovation and expansion project is part of a five year plan.
The renovation of LVCC’s three million square foot facility will take two years, ending in 2010. The project includes: building a grand lobby along the length of the South Hall, a grand concourse to tie together the center’s three major halls, a signature façade along the front of the building and an enclosed monorail connector. Did I mention the project will add another one-half million square feet of exhibition space and a new 100,000sq-ft ballroom?
And I thought it was a long way from the North Hall to the South Hall.
At the MRC booth, I had a little fun ribbing Paul Furman, systems application engineer, about his badge which proclaimed him to be “The Greek God of Microwave.”
The tone went from jocular to serious when the conversation turned to the integration of IP technology into digital microwave links, however. MRC demonstrated a digital diversity receive package as part of an interesting, indoor mockup of the inside of an ENG van on the one hand and a ENG newsroom control system. more
The editors and writers of Broadcast Engineering post live from the 2008 NAB Show in Las Vegas as the news happens. Check back throughout the day for the latest in industry news, reports from press conferences and product introductions.
The company developed the WFM 5000 after listening to its customers who needed a basic monitoring device that would satisfy the need to maintain the level of quality control over field acquisition they’ve grown to expect after years of SD newsgathering at a price that would not weigh heavily on their budgets, said the company’s John Hammerstrom. The WFM 5000 has a list price of less than $7000.
At the 
