To be honest, the last day of the NAB Show was creepy. Product and marketing managers seemed to be milling around, anxiously waiting for anyone to stop by. The halls were much quieter, and I was even able to take my time stopping by my last few booths because I didn’t have to wade through crowds of people.

The NAB released the numbers, approximately 83,000 people registered, but representatives from many companies were still happy about the show. I asked many people the same question: how has the drop in attendance affected your experience? And the answers were often the same. It’s an issue of quality over quantity. Just because not as many people made it to the show doesn’t mean that there weren’t some serious buyers there. more

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.

Despite the lower attendance at this year’s NAB show (the NAB announced that there were about 83,000 attendees compared with last year’s 105,000), the show was still successful for many exhibitors I talked with.

Though the economy affected the number of people at NAB 2009, the quality of those people was good. And I must say, it made the convention halls a little more easy to navigate!

NAB is all about innovation and technology, so I want to share with you some of the new products I saw at the show. more

The sky didn’t fall at NAB

The first question at every booth visit I made was, “What do you think the attendance is?”.

I guessed about 65,000. Other ranges I heard from exhibitors was 40,000 to 80,000. NAB says 83,000 “registered”. Yes, and I can tell you they counted me twice because I (and thousands of others) have more than one registration. A person who’s a speaker, exhibitor and conference attendee might have three registrations. So, you have to take “registrations” with a grain of salt. more

Christie Digital arrived in Las Vegas for the NAB Show with the next step in the evolution of rear-projection DLP cubes –removal of the spinning red, green and blue color wheel.

In its place, the company is using three separate red, green and blue LEDs –something Christie says is a first in the professional DLP display market. Making its debut in two new rear projection cubes, the substitution offers a variety of advantages, including longer life, a wider color gamut and less maintenance.

For those who are unfamiliar with conventional DLP designs, a spinning red, green and blue color wheel exposes the on and off micro-pixels of the DLP to the correctly red, green and blue light sequentially. more

Miranda Technologies (SU2807) is showing a full line of new modular products based on the Densité platform. The platform includes many solutions, including the Densité LGK-3901. This is a modular 3Gb/s/HD/SD branding processor capable of inserting up to five independent layers of graphics. Three of the keying layers can be fed by internally stored still/animated graphics, and two are fed by external graphics devices. It also offers automated character generation, clock insertion, EAS support, and eight channel audio clip/voice-over playout.

Up to 10 of the LGK-3901 modules can be fitted in a single Densite 3 frame (3RU). The LGK-3901 modules can also be combined with a wide array of other interfacing modules. more

Bycast

Is “cloud storage” where storage is heading? Annette Saliken, director of marketing communications for Bycast, is confident that it is. For almost seven years, Bycast has been providing its GRID “business model,” as Saliken put it, but only now are storage experts really starting to talk about it, she said.

The company’s GRID solution (what they call storage virtualization software) is a software middle layer between the storage infrastructure and the end user. Through partnerships with about five other companies, this new “business model,” as Saliken put it, interfaces with various third-party systems throughout the production workflow and provides for user-defined rules for movement of content. more

Rich D’Ambrise, director of technology at Maxell, was super excited about this year’s show because Maxell was releasing a product that’s been two years in the making, the iVDR-Xtreme.

The iVDR-Xtreme is easily portable at only 6.1oz and fits in a shirt pocket (they did that on purpose, he told me). It’s also been tested to meet military specs for temperature resistance and can resist shock from a drop of 4.6ft (1.4) onto tile or concrete. During the testing process, D’Ambrise said, they dropped the cartridge repeatedly to see which end it most often landed on, then they added additional protection to that side. more

At the NAB Show, Audio-Technica is unveiling the BP896 subminiature lavalier mic which is designed to provide high-quality audio pickup with an unobtrusive profile.

The mic, a subminiature omnidirectional condenser lavalier, is enclosed in a low-profile housing designed to minimize noise and comes in three colors: white, black and flesh tone. The BP896 mic capsule measures 2.5mm in diameter. It will ship in June.

Audio-Technica also is featuring the new BP4071L shotgun mic. Initially custom built for use covering last summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, the mic is now available to the industry at large. It is about 6in longer than the company’s BP4071. more

Smaller frame, more features

The Snell (SU1917, SU1717) Kahuna 1 M/E HD is Snell’s latest addition to this popular line of production switchers. The new Kahuna 1 M/E HD delivers the multiformat performance of the leading Kahuna production switcher, and does so in a 3-RU mainframe.

The Kahuna 1 M/E HD offers a substantial feature set in a cost-effective, entry-level price for broadcasters seeking the flexibility of a multiformat production environment, or needing to enable a gradual, controlled transition to HD. more