My subjective thoughts on the show:

We know that the numbers were down, somewhere around 20 per cent, but that is nowhere near as bad as some predictions. I talked to people at many booths and most said that they had useful meetings, a very few said it was very quiet. Those that were getting interest said the main issue is finance; there are projects that need to go ahead but that the broadcasters will need to get credit.

And what was the buzz? I’m sure that new product introductions were well down. It just doesn’t make sense to spend marketing dollars on product launches unless they are sure to sell in the immediate future.

Manufacturers were stressing how their new products could improve efficiencies and lower costs. Even without the special circumstances, these two benefits are going to be essential to help TV adapt to competition for advertising from the web and new services like mobile and IPTV.

The media landscape was changing anyway; this year just makes it essential to adapt to survive. Any broadcaster that is still tape-based should seriously look at migrating to file-based operations if they want to stay around. The benefits are compelling.

As a walked around the show floor, I was frequently asked what new products impressed me. Apart from the emerged 3D technology, several products that did impress me were also selected by our Pick Hit judges, Look down that list and you will see the breadth of new product releases.

Snell launched a new router range, the Pro-Bel 800 series which has some interesting new features. One is Catsii. The back panel BNCs are illuminated to indicate signal presence, and can configured as crosshairs to locate a specific connector. Engineers will find this handy when fighting through a mass on cable to change a connection on the rear.

The router also has a touch-screen interface in the front door to read status and configuration.

As I walk around the show floor, one topic that always comes up is, what do you think of the traffic? It is lighter, its easier to get around the aisles, and it’s easier to get to talk with people. The NAB have announced first two days as 83,000 registrations, that is down, but not a disaster. Most vendors are reporting genuine interest, so folks are still buying. The booth that are usually packed are — packed.

Sony have released an HDCAM-SR camcorder, the SRW-9000. This will be a winner for steadicam shots, where the F23/35 have limitations due to their size and weight. This is the first Sony camcorder that permits 10-bit acquisition in HD.

Over at Panasonic, good news for those who find P2 cards too expensive. They have released an economy line, the E-series in 16, 32 and 64GB. The 64GB card will sell for $998.

Harmonic announced that they are integrating Google’s Content ID into the Rhozet Carbon Coder. When content is transcoded to a distribution format the Content ID can be generated on the fly (typically at 10X realtime). The ID is submitted to Google with usage tags. If that content is uploaded to YouTube, when it is processed to the web format, a fingerprint is generated and checked against their database. Unauthorized content is then automatically blocked. This is an easy way to control piracy from YouTube, and can be built right into a post workflow.

As stations add sub-channels after the digital transition, providing EAS to many outputs becomes expensive with discrete channel systems. Many Public stations cover a state, and may want to target one area with an EAS alert. Trilithic released at the show a way to insert EAS into an ASI transport stream. An announcement can be inserted into chosen program streams, with optional graphics insertion for snipes and logs. The system uses RGB Networks BNP for the transport stream processing.

Several companies have launched 3D stereoscopic products, or have stated that they will develop 3D products for release in the future. Although the movie industry is producing blockbuster movies in 3D, for live sport, 3D television is a compelling proposition.

Panasonic is one company which has embarked on a development project for an end-to-end system. This includes a twin-lens P2 camcorder, all the way through to consumer equipment including a 3D blu-ray and 3D displays.

Miranda is showing a 3D multiviewer aimed at the truck market, for monitoring live 3D sport and events. As Michel Proulx of Miranda pointed out, you need a 3Gb/s infrastructure to support the L/R signals. With their new product releases supporting 3G/b, 1.5-only products look set to follow 270Mb/s-only products into history.

I have seen experimental transmissions from Sky in the UK, and they show great promise. There are some issues to resolve about camera work, and how best to shoot, but the rest of the processing chain can be built with adapted 3Gb/s infrastructure. The Sky system even uses their regular HD PVR.

There is no doubt that the CE vendors will push 3D, with games being a big draw, but the availability of 3D movies means that the repository of content is growing rapidly. Whether this is the right year to invest is another matter, but these developments have long lead times—just look how long it took HD to become mainstream.

Harris is showing a different way forward with their mobile TV products. With trials and rollouts starting, it has finally become a reality, and offers new business opportunities to hard-pushed stations. Although it can be received on handsets, it can be used to delivery over-the-air TV to a multitude of devices: signage in public transportation, netbooks—anything that isn’t harnessed to a roof-top antenna.

For the press, the show starts two days early on Saturday. We have back-to-back press conferences over the weekend – one PowerPoint after another. Saturday opened with Grass Valley (not Thomson). Just as I had got used to calling the switcher and camera manufacturer Thomson instead of Grass, it’s all change again. Of course this is all about the impending sale, announced by parent company Thomson back in January. Company spokesman Jeff Rosica would not be led on progress on the sale, only to say “we have received a number of serious enquiries”. The feeling is that an announcement could be close.

As for products, Grass announced a new 1.5Gb/s switcher, the Kayenne. They stated that they believe that there is not yet sufficient demand for a 3Gb/s product. The switcher is impressive, in versions from 1 ½ up to 4 ½ M/Es, with the fully loaded product sporting 30 keyers and 20 channels of DVE.

Another new product is the LDK3000 studio camera, based on the Xensium CMOS imager of the Infinity camcorder. It will sell for 30% less than the CCD-based LDK8000.

Next we were bussed to Omneon, for an introduction from the new CEO Suresh Vasudevan. After a presentation on the financials, where we learnt that they have revenue per employee of $400k, we heard about the near-term focus to grow share in the production and content repurposing segments.

The new MediaDeck GX channel playout system is the fruition of a partnership with Pixel Power, to put graphics and keying into a playout server. This leaves the broadcaster free to use their favored automation, and the product will be shown on the Crispin, NVerzion, Pebble beach and Sundance booths.

Second announcement was that Omneon is selling the Castify business to Aspera to focus on servers and media storage products. They will instead partner with Aspera on content delivery between media storage systems.

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.

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

Saturday 12, the round of press conferences kicked off. The first sessions made many mentions of file-based workflows. Nothing new here, but what the IT infrastructure does enable is outsourcing of “broadcast” functions like asset management, content distribution and multi-format delivery to enterprise service providers.

This got me to thinking, what is a broadcaster, and what do they do? If they do outsource many of their traditional operations from newsgathering to playout, then what is left? In playout, the word is branding, specifically channel branding. But following this through, the television network now becomes a brand, not a broadcaster, with the in-house functions left as program commissioning and scheduling, plus the revenue provider, the sales arm. more

Monday, April 7, I spoke with Simon Derry, Chief Executive of Snell and Wilcox spin-off, AmberFin. Launched this week, just in time for NAB, the new company signals a split in S&W between traditional hardware products like Alchemist and Kahuna, and software products like iCR. AmberFin‘s offering is based around the iCR software platform for mastering, QC and distribution of file-based content. more