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.
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.
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
On Monday, David Neff, president of Axcera, told me off the record that his company was planning to announce its endorsement of one of the three technologies — Harris/LG’s MPH, Rohde & Schwarz/Samsung’s A-VSB, and the Thomson/Micronas solution — being considered by the ATSC as a digital mobile TV standard. I deferred to his request to keep this information hush hush, but couldn’t help blurting out, “I bet it’s A-VSB. You mentioned the benefits of Single Frequency Networks several times today.” In response, Neff would only say, “You are quite perceptive.”
Of the three candidate standards, A-VSB makes the most explicit use of SFNs. I’m sure there is nothing about the other candidate standards that precludes the use of SFNs, but it seems Rhode & Schwarz and Samsung have been the most vocal about using these kinds of set-ups to ensure adequate signal coverage. So this is how I guessed it was A-VSB that Axcera would endorse. I’d love to chalk this up to my being the queen of broadcast technology, but I’m afraid it’s more that I’m a journalist and therefore good at picking up on patterns.
Last night, Axcera made it official: It’s endorsing A-VSB, and is developing transmission solutions for the commercial deployment of single frequency networks. According to Neff, his company decided to go with A-VSB because it has the longest track record of development (it’s been around since 2005) and is being developed through a collaborative and open process. In addition, third generation chipsets have been implemented for handsets and mobile devices that are compatible with A-VSB.
The company is holding demonstrations of A-VSB at booth C1307 in the Central Hall. If you can stop by before the show floor closes at 4pm today, you’ll be able to view what A-VSB pictures look like on some of the latest mobile handsets and devices.
The audio console powerhouse, SSL demonstrated a new combination of mixing console, signal router and workstation controller called Matrix. SSL says it is targeted at post production and television studios who work primarly on DAWs.
Matrix is a SuperAnalogue 16 channel, 40 input mixing console with built-in signal router and multi-layer digital workstation control. It’s designed to bring analog audio mixing and posting into a digital workflow by providing a varaiety of new tools to work effectively in both domains simultaneously.
The console comes equipped with comprehensive foldback facilities and mix and auxiliary busses. A 16+1 fader, 4 layer DAW controller connects to other devices over a single Ethernet connection enabling access to popular DAWs including Pro Tools, Logic, Live and Reason.
The console has an integrated, recallable, software-controlled 32×16x16 analogue routing matrix, which eliminates the need for external patchbays.
The Matrix provides platform-independent project management and routing control for facilities of all sizes.
Reporters in the field who edit their stories with Apple’s Final Cut Pro now have an easy way to input their raw footage into a MacBook Pro for editing.
With the growing presence of Final Cut Pro in newsrooms across the country, Matrox thought it was only natural to bet broadcasters would like to take the NLE into the field. From the appearance of its booth and the interest level in its new MXO2 interface box, Matrox won that bet. more
Although there’s a rumor that show attendance is down this year, that hasn’t affected Tektronix one bit. While I was at the booth I learned that Tektronix had more than 800 people visit its booth each day this week, numbers that the company was very happy with. Amy Higgins, Americas Region PR Manager, Test & Measurement and Video products, told me that more people visited the booth in just two days during NAB 2008 than visited the booth over the total week of NAB four years ago.
She said the quality of the people who were visiting the booth was fantastic. People weren’t just stopping by to get a brochure and leave. They stayed, and they had questions and needs.
Tektronix gave us a demo of its WFM7120 waveform monitor. The unit has been upgraded to include 3Gb/s single link serial-digital-interface (SDI) support. This capability is added through two new options: a monitoring option (3G) and a jitter measurement option.
My last stop at NAB was at the VCI booth (SU727). There I met up with Jamie Meyer, the division manager for automation systems at VCI. I’d met with him briefly last year, but this was my first time to sit down with him and talk. What he’s excited about is that KEYE-TV, which uses VCI’s autoXe MC automation system, was just announced as the winner in the Station Automation category in the Broadcast Engineering Excellence Awards.
Jamie says that what makes the system so strong is that the database is at the foundation. With digital content, the metadata surrounding content is becoming more important, he says, with the database as the foundation on which the applications reside. more
K*WILL is enabling broadcasters to seek out and find the source of lip sync problems wherever they occur. At its NAB2008 booth, the company introduced the portable VP3000, which relies on the company’s Video DNA technology to run signal analysis using double stimulus methodology.
The double stimulus approach compares an original signal source that is presumed to be error free to signal that’s been digitally process, such as a satellite feed or one that’s been encoded or decoded. Based on the original signal, the VP3000 can identify if there’s been any signal degradation, presumably caused by the signal processing. That way, broadcasters have a way to zero-in on the source of the lip syncing errors. more
Half way through now and I have seen more “workflow solutions” than I though possible. I do wish the marketing folks didn’t run a controlled vocabulary, a bit of variety would be great. In the next print issue I’m running a feature on workflows so I have no shortage of raw content to work with.
The new cameras from Sony and Panasonic look great, something for everyone from the digital cinematographer (F35, new 2700 and 3700 Varicams) right down to the budget shooter. Panasonic were showing prototypes of new AVCHD camcorders with long-GOP AVC recorded to SD cards. Sony had similar cameras recording HDV to CF cards. Although these are aimed at very much at the wedding and event videographer, you can bet they will appeal for many broadcast applications like documentary productions. 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 
Reporters in the field who edit their stories with Apple’s Final Cut Pro now have an easy way to input their raw footage into a MacBook Pro for editing.
