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
I ended yesterday in the Fujitsu booth (SU10928), where I met with Dan Dalton, Fujitsu’s director of new product development. The big thing going on at Fujitsu is it’s new IP-9500 MPEG-4 AVC low latency encoder for HD satellite newsgathering.
He showed me a demo of how a user could put HD in an SD feed. There’s an option for low latency, encoding and decoding video content at less than 300ms. And it can handle HD video from as low as 4Mb/s and as high 27Mb/s.
Listen to an audio clip of Dan talking about the Fujitsu IP-9500.
Broadcast Pix showed their HD versions of the expanded Slate switcher family. The new Slate HD switchers provide an easy and cost effective way to create compelling live HD video. Their file-based architecture streamlines live production workflow by completely integrating the included switcher, CG, clip stores, still stores and monitoring while seamlessly networking them with content from edit bays. The first Slate HD switcher was used at the Sundance Film Festival.
Each of the three new Slate HD models includes: a switcher with up to six keyers and DVEs, multi-view monitoring, a Harris Inscriber CG, and a clip store. The switchers’ hybrid I/O supports: 1080i, 720p, SD, DVI and VGA, plus analog output in composite, Y/C and component. It can add: HD and SD analog inputs and 1080p output. Both 16:9 and 4:3 content can be mixed while preserving the native aspect ratio of each element.
Miranda Technologies’ Michel Proulx, CTO spent most of his press conference time discussing the problems broadcasters face in delivering good new 5.1 audio. “Time and time again, we’ve found that it’s multi-channel audio that causes the most problems when transitioning to HD,” he said.
He described three key problem areas: loudness measurement and control; handling Dolby metadata; and maintaining 5.1 surround sound when playing out stereo legacy content. He said that loudness control is especially evident to anyone watching popular HD programming.
Miranda’s new solutions for these issues include new Densité Series cards with advanced audio processing, upmixing and level control. The DAP-1781 audio processing module. The DAP-1781 is an eight channel digital audio processor which can perform accurate loudness control and measurement, using ITU-R BS.1770 or LEQ(A) and trigger an alarm if limits are exceeded. more
So representatives from every company at this year’s NAB, and surely every NAB since the beginning of time, want to convince the public that their companies are the best, whether they are trying to corner the newsroom system market from acquisition to playout or focus specifically on one aspect of the broadcast industry and encourage integration with as many companies as possible.
But, really, what can I say to a company that was featured, in small or large part, in more than a dozen booths beyond its own — not just integrated by these companies, but backed by as well — and that adheres to the idea of being “cheaper, faster and better” than any other company that is trying to do what it does? more
Communications Specialties Inc. (CSI) is in booth SL8025, which happens to be just across the aisle from the Penton booth (Broadcast Engineering’s parent company) in the South Lower Hall. In the CSI booth, Derek Miranda walked me through a live setup of the company’s new Pure Digital Fiberlink 3150 Series, which allows users to transmit HD/SD-SDI over one single mode or multimode fiber.
The company also offers the Pure Digital Fiberlink in 7500 Series and 7502 Series versions. They use no compression or sync stripping.
My first appointment of the day was with Tamihiko Ogawa and Hisashi Kasahara from NTT Electronics (SU10220). The company’s big introduction this year are the AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV HVE9100 encoder and HVD9100 decoder. One of key features the men emphasized was that they feature 4:2:2 chroma for high-quality professional broadcast. The units are compact, lightweight and supports a wide range of applications, including MPEG-2.
In their booth you can see a series of displays showing the encoders and decoders. The first screen shows the original video footage. The second shows the video at 45Mb/s, 4:2:2 and 1920 x 1080. The third is at 18Mb/s, 4:2:2 and 1920 x 1080. And the fourth is at 8Mb/s, 4:2:0 and 1440 x 1080.
The HVT9100, an MPEG-2 to AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV real-time transcoder is another relatively new addition to the NTT lineup. It transcodes, while maintaining picture quality with minimal dealy in real time.
Update: NTT’s HVE9100/HVD9100 H.264 encoders won a Pick Hit award!
Little did I know when I showed up at my appointment today with Tony Iwamoto, VP of sales, marketing and technical services for IDX, that I would be checking out two particular products that were so new that they had literally landed in Vegas just in time for NAB.
For this first product, a little background. Last year, when I went to visit IDX, a provider of batteries, power products and chargers, I remember seeing the Elite line of lithium-ion batteries as well as a wireless camera transmitter/receiver system. The wireless system was being highlighted for its high picture quality and low latency, and when I mean low latency, I mean the latency was just barely enough to be perceivable. But it was still a pretty nice, functional system. I bring this up because at the IDX booth today, I was introduced to the CAM-WAVE system, an uncompressed HD/SD-SDI wireless transmitter/receiver system. 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.
I ended yesterday in the 
