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
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.
The editors and writers of Broadcast Engineering post live from the 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.
