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.
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.
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
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.
Last night was the b-roll.net NAB Bash 2008. Broadcast Engineering includes the blog feeds on our BE-Roll industry blog aggregator from several of the photogs who were in attendance at the event. First I met Stewart Pittman, the Lenslinger himself. He introduced me to Kevin Johnson, founder of the b-roll.net community. Later, as Kevin stood at the front of the room raffling off prizes from the event sponsors, I met up with Stewart again and he introduced me to Chris Weaver, who writes the TV Photog Blog, and Rick Portier, who writes the Turdpolisher blog. Leslinger’s Viewfinder BLUES and Chris’ TV Photog Blog are both featured on the BE-Roll. Rick’s very entertaining Turdpolisher is not currently included on the BE-Roll because of the colorful language Rick sometimes uses. But if you are not offended by four-letter words, it’s a blog I recommend checking out. more
Amid all the hoopla surrounding the potential ATSC mobile digital TV standard at this year’s show, one established European standard made a quiet, though possibly momentous entry into the U.S. scene: DVB-SH. The satellite company ICO launched into space at 4:12pm Eastern today, Monday, April 17th, its G1 satellite, placing it into its initial geosynchronous transfer orbit at 4:56pm. After making an initial telemetry and command contact with a ground station in Perth, Australia, it will go into its final position where it will be miles above the eastern Pacific, providing services to the continental U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The satellite will operate in the 2GHz S-band.
ICO is using the satellite to trial its ICO mim, an interactive mobile video, navigation and emergency service, which is based on DVB-SH, a hybrid digital terrestrial/satellite mobile TV standard. The company wants to launch the service by 2009, and is envisioning it as an in-car type service. It would be sort of like a Sirrius satellite radio service – except based on video. It’s generating a fair amount of buzz at the show. more
The editors and writers of Broadcast Engineering post live from the 2008 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.
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.
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.
