By Phil Kurz, Broadcast Engineering contributing writer
Omneon is healthy, prosperous and delivering product aimed at tapping into more than simply the market for playout servers.
That was the message Omneon CEO Suresh Vasudevan and Geoff Stedman, senior VP, products and markets, conveyed April 18 to members of the media attending its NAB Show press conference at the Palms Casino Resort.
While many companies struggled last year, Omneon grew 2008 revenues 43 percent, up from its 2007 revenue of $89 million, said Stedman. Perhaps insulating it to a degree from regions with shaky economies, the company reported its revenue is fairly well distributed geographically with the Americas accounting for 42 percent, EMEA 41 percent and APJ 17 percent.
Capping off his description of the company’s financial health, Stedman reported Omneon has a cash position of $34 million with no debt. The proof points seemed intended to emphasize that despite significant challenges in the broadcast industry, Omneon is financially sound and in a position to take the steps necessary to assure continued growth.
To that end, Omneon announced some new products and partnerships aimed at accelerating its growth despite economic uncertainty this year. more
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
Broadcast Engineering’s Pick Hit awards are the industry’s longest-running product technology awards for broadcast and production. With a 24-year history, Pick Hits are the most prestigious technical awards given at NAB.
At the 2008 NAB Show, a panel of independent judges toured the exhibition floor for three days, looking for innovative technology. They then met to make their selections based on multiple criteria, including the technical and financial improvements the products can bring to a facility’s operation. Our editors and publisher have no vote in the selection process. more
At the TV technology lunchon yesterday Ira Flatow, TV journalist and host of “Talk the Nation,” gave the opening remarks. He joked about how TV has changed so much. He said, at the start of TV, we were all squinting at a tiny black and white screen, and we wanted something bigger and better. Since then we’ve evolved to amazing picture clarity on huge sized displays. But now we WANT to watch video on tiny screens, as more and more people are watching mobile TV on handheld devices. Someone in the audience shouted out “Back to the Future.”
Flatow also discussed the use of avatars during an audio podcast he hosts called “Science Friday” for National Public Radio (NPR). NPR has created a virtual reality community where you literally create a virtual “you” and join a virtual community.
Is this something that TV stations will eventually do as well? I’d be interested to see.
This morning, I got the chance to view a live demo of two of the three technologies being considered by the ATSC as a mobile digital TV standard — A-VSB and MPH. The Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) has set up a van in the Central Hall outfitted to recieve two live channel feeds — one UHF and the other VHF — to demonstrate how each system performs.
For the demo, I squeezed myself into the backseat of the van, where a monitoring wall was set up behind the driver and passenger seats. The two main video displays depicted a live, MPH-enabled feed from a local UHF channel and another live, A-VSB-enabled feed from a local VHF channel. According to Victor Tawil, senior vice president of technology for MSTV (which is performing the trials of all the potential ATSC technologies on behalf of the OMVC), the two systems are periodically swapped between each channel, so that the UHF channel might be getting an A-VSB feed and the VHF channel the MPH one. This keeps things as objective as possible, and is also the protocol for the actual field trials of the systems. more
There is no reason the television industry cannot have a working mobile television standard by the end of 2008, Sterling Davis, vice president of engineering at Cox Broadcasting and member of the Open Mobile Broadcasting Coalition, said on the opening day of NAB2008.
Davis offered a report to a gathering of more than 400 broadcasters April 14 on progress the coalition has made testing competitive systems offered by Harris, Rhode & Schwarz and Thomson as part of its Independent Demonstration of Viability (IDOV) project aimed at birthing an ATSC-approved mobile TV standard by the end of the year.
According to Davis, field trials of the systems began in March and will continue in April in San Francisco and Las Vegas. During NAB2008, the Sinclair Broadcast and Telemundo stations in Las Vegas, are transmitting mobile TV as part of their digital stream. more
Although this was the seventh year Broadcast Engineering held its Excellence Awards contest, this was the first year that we held a ceremony to honor the winners.
The Excellence Awards have become the industry’s standard of measurement for new facilities, recognizing innovation, high-quality design and construction. Entries include those featuring telco, cable, broadcast and production facilities.
Broadcast Engineering presented the winners with a plaque at the Penton Media booth #SL8328. Following the ceremony, winners were treated to a champagne toast and fruit and cheese party.
If you’re interested in participating in the 2009 Excellence Awards contest, please contact Angela Snell for more information at angela.snell@penton.com.
At the stereoscopic projection systems session on Sunday, I learned that I apparently know very little, or at least very little about the specifics, challenges and technology that go into making 3-D movies happen.
Technology for 3-D is here, and the major movie studios are quickly getting onboard. According to Josh Greer, CEO of Real-D, a company that supplies 3-D technology to the movie industry as well as for military and airline applications, 1250 3-D systems from Real-D have been deployed in 25 countries worldwide since November 2005, and in 2008, 11 movies from major studios were released in 3-D.
“There’s no one way to do 3-D,” Greer said. He went on to describe that although there are various ways to do 3-D, the main concerns of those who want to implement these systems are cost, content and quality. But, according to Greer, most of the cost involved is for system maintenance, not the initial purchase. more
On Tuesday at 9 a.m., one of the RTNDA sessions is going to be on “Going Local…in a new direction.” The focus, according to the RTNDA Web site, is to “redefine what is news online and leverage technology to draw in new audiences and revenue.”
One of the panelists, Cory Bergman, is director of digital media for KING5.com and NWCN.com in Seattle. He’s also a Lost Remote blogger who I’ve been following for the last year.
One of the big things he’s going to be discussing is local aggregated blogs. He’s created one for Seattle called Citizen Rain. Local aggregated blog sites pull in the feeds from blogs done by people in the community who are writing about event and happenings within their communities. more
Broadcast Engineering and Telephony are teaming up with NAB to highlight the latest developments in IPTV technology and applications. At NAB there will be a new conference series and super session aimed at telecommunications and wireless industry professionals, along with a new IPTV Pavilion that will showcase new IPTV products and services.
As the official media sponsors of the event, Broadcast Engineering and Telephony have put together three handy resources:
1. IPTV Pavilion Web site
For all things related to IPTV, click here. The site is dedicated to offering complete coverage of IPTV events and a wide range of editorial content about the IPTV sector.
2. IPTV Pavilion e-newsletters
Get the scoop on what’s going on in the IPTV Pavilion plus news and product announcements. Visit the NAB Pavilion microsite to read the past newsletters and check back for new issues this Thursday and then the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday during NAB.
3. NAB Show IPTV Directory
The comprehensive guide will be distributed at the IPTV Pavilion and feature profiles of NAB Show exhibitors that serve the IPTV market, product descriptions and additional content and insight on the IPTV sector from the editors of Telephony and Broadcast Engineering. We hope the directory will provide attendees with a complete overview of the IPTV-focused exhibits and programs.
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.
By Phil Kurz, Broadcast Engineering contributing writer
Broadcast Engineering’s Pick Hit awards are the industry’s longest-running product technology awards for broadcast and production. With a 24-year history, Pick Hits are the most prestigious technical awards given at NAB.
Although this was the seventh year Broadcast Engineering held its Excellence Awards contest, this was the first year that we held a ceremony to honor the winners.
