Brad on Broadcast

Earlier this year, Miranda Technologies completed its acquisition of privately held NVISION, which is based in Grass Valley, CA. The all cash transaction, which was originally announced on December 10, 2008, is valued at $40 million and will be financed with cash on hand and existing credit facilities.

I recently talked with Miranda’s CTO, Michel Proulx, about the acquisition. more…

Ahh, editors have a rough life, spending hours in front of a computer racking the brain for pithy new stories on new television technology. Like right now.

I’m sitting in the lodge at Copper Mountain directly overlooking the American Eagle ski lift, filled with skiers heading to the summit for a day’s fun. I have a Diet Dr. Pepper at my side, and I’m really trying hard to be productive. This is a tough assignment.

The reason I’m working from the Copper Mountain ski resort is that Barco is holding a partner’s meeting, and I’ve been invited to participate. My goal is to interview some of Barco’s product managers and get some hands-on time with the broadcast products. more…

Look out television broadcasters. You’re about to be hit with tens of millions of dollars in new “license” fees. Faced with pretending to fund his whopping $1,700,000,000,000 budget, (that’s $1.7 trillion dollars for the zeros-challenged), the president is apparently looking under every rock and in every spidey hole for ways to levy new taxes. According to a recent Reuters story, the administration is proposing to impose “spectrum license fees” on the unlucky winners of the former broadcast spectrum. more…

The Vitec Group (exhibiting at NAB booths C6519, C6517 and C6518) announced today the establishment of RF Extreme, a new business unit within the company that comprises the digital and analog video microwave brands of Nucomm (booth C3707) RF Central and Microwave Service Company (MSC). more…

OMG. I just learned that DTV can cause massive health injuries. Birds falling from the sky, phlegmatic cats, and evidence of huge increases in headaches, unclear thinking, nervous tensions, total apathy and stabbing pain come from being exposed to even minute levels of digital television signals.

This recently discovered data comes from a letter to President Barack Obama from a panel of German doctors. These physicians provide a list of the dangers posed by digital television as experienced in their country. The doctors plead for our government to stop the DTV transition until fiber optics can be used to replace RF delivery. more…

The next stop on my NYC trip was the Library Hotel in midtown Manhattan. There, I met with Jennie Evans, of Manor Marketing, and five of her clients for a relaxing roundtable of discussions at the top of the hotel in the Poetry Room.

The Library Hotel in New York City offers its guests more than 6000 volumes of books organized by the Dewey Decimal System. Each floor of the hotel honors one of the 10 categories of the DDS, including Social Sciences, Literature, Languages, History, Math & Science, General Knowledge, Technology, Philosophy, The Arts and Religion. And each of the 60 rooms is uniquely adorned with a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic within the category to which it belongs.

However, you’ll miss the hotel if you don’t look hard. I never did see an outside sign — just a storefront filled with lots of old-looking books. I asked the doorman for the location of the meeting and he directed me to the fourteenth floor. Upon embarking the elevator, I found myself entering a quiet lounge, complete with a rooftop patio. It was a pleasant evening coupled with the perfect rooftop location for leisurely business discussions. more…

Also new from Panasonic (exhibiting at NAB booths C3712 and C3327) are a pair of high-resolution LCD HD production monitors — the 25.5in BT-LH2550 and the 17in BT-LH1710.

The larger LH2550 provides a 1920 x 1200 pixel In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel with an expanded color gamut that exceeds the NTSC standard. It offers six color space settings, therefore supporting a wide range of high-end applications. The monitor’s image processing engine has a 3-D look-up table that calibrates it to reproduce content according to the selected color standard. The monitor is lighter than its predecessor and features a full range of inputs including DVI-D, two auto-switching SDI (HS/SSD, component and RGB), as well as standard RS-232C and GPI remote inputs. more…

I’m into doing unique things. Like running marathons, 13 miles up the Barr Trail on Pikes Peak and then 13 miles back down in one day. Or, running across all but one of the burrow bridges in New York City. Or, finding the very beginning of the Avenue of the Americas.

Okay, the last unique thing I did was practically an accident, but I did discover the beginning of the famous NYC street Avenue of the Americas. Have you ever been to the beginning of a street — the absolute starting point? Well, now I have. I stumbled upon 2 Avenue of the Americas, the location of the Tribeca Grand Hotel and the 2009 Panasonic pre-NAB press conference.

At the press conference, Panasonic unveiled what it claims to be the world’s first affordable 10-bit, 4:2:2 professional HD camcorder, featuring individual frame AVC-Intra recording, native 2.2-megapixel imagers and variable frame rates. more…

Looking to support broadcasters’ desires to do more with less, Harris will be demonstrating an integrated master control solution at NAB booth N2502. The demonstration will use the company’s full breadth of interoperable capabilities to prepare content for playout to a variety of distribution channels. more…

With today’s totally unreasonable travel costs, Harris (exhibiting this year at NAB booth N2502) decided to allow all of us editors to stay at home and listen to its pre-NAB press conference via the telephone. Given that I often have to fly US Airways, where every bag costs $15 and even a carbonated beverage costs $2, staying home is okay with me!

This year’s NAB Show attendees are going to be focused on two things: improved efficiency (fewer people doing more) and building new revenue streams. Harris plans to address both needs. more…