With the growing interest in stereoscopic 3-D television, Grass Valley was quick to emphasize its expertise in video compression and content processing technologies at this year’s NAB. The company demonstrated products targeted at transport applications for both backhaul (contribution links) and delivery to the home.

(See Broadcast Engineering TV’s coverage of Grass Valley here.)

Speaking with Scott Murphy, he emphasized “[that] sports will be the likely driver for stereoscopic 3-D television.” These high-end applications create the need for high reliability and quality contribution links from the remote site back to the studio. more

Belo, Cox Media Group, E.W. Scripps, Fox, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst Television, ION Television, Media General, Meredith, NBC, Post-Newsweek Stations, and Raycom Media announced plans to form a joint venture to develop a new national mobile content service. Using existing broadcast spectrum, the service will allow member companies to provide content to mobile devices, including live and on-demand video, local and national news from print and electronic sources, and sports and entertainment programming. more

3-D is everywhere at NAB this year. Panasonic’s 3-D camera was being shown on the floor. It was outputting two HD-SDI signals to feed the monitors, and the picture looked great. Panasonic also was showing a compact 3-D production switcher to go with the camera.

I attended a session on broadcast media file exchange by Todd Roth. In it he talked about how to choose between the different file types as well as the good and bad about the various storage systems out there.

There was another session about how to make ATSC M/H work financialy and the shift in revenue flow in other media sectors. Did you know that the music biz actually made more money last year, it just didn’t go to the record companies. We could see a simular shift in broadcast TV, including mobile.

There’s a new mobile video standard coming, according to Jay Adrick, vice president of broadcast technology for Harris Corporation. At Sunday night’s press conference, Adrick revealed Harris’ latest technological innovation developed in cooperation with LG Electronics: mobile digital television delivered in Scalable Full-Channel Mobile Mode (SFCMM).

The new system enables as many as 16 different video programs to be sent in the same 6MHz bandwidth used by a TV broadcaster. SFCMM has been proposed for ATSC standardization. more

Like a politician, MobiTV is a master of the art of the possible. In the ATSC mobile TV pavillion at NAB, MobiTV showed its new MixTV, which adds broadcast mobile TV to its unicast subscription mobile TV service — the best of both worlds according to Cedric Fernandes, MobiTV VP, Technology, who talks about it here.

Tuesday morning the phone function on my Treo broke, putting NAB on hold while I, panicked-ly, scurried around gettting a replacement into service. The experience gave me some new insights into modern life.

First, being phone-less is akin to a disabiity; forcing you into, as Blanche DuBois said, “depending on the kindness of strangers.” Second, the Treo remained useful even though I couldn’t make “phone calls:” calendar, contacts, reminders, chat, Internet, mobile TV.

I was able to check in with Teamcast’s session on the company’s new hybrid DVB-T/DVB-SH mobile TV product line, debuted at NAB. The advantage of a hybrid solution, says TeamCast EVP and GM Serge Mal, is that it lets operators offer mobile TV services leveraging the advantages of both satellite and terrestrial transmission systems. more

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.

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.

When it comes to “hot” mobile TV products on the show floor this year, the focus seems to be mostly on exciters and multiplexers. This makes sense, since many broadcasters already have the transmission infrastructure in place to run a mobile TV service: They just need to integrate mobile TV-compatible exciters and multiplexers into their transmission networks in order to get services up and running.

Still, I’d feel remiss if I did not mention how some of the transmitter, antenna and power amplifier manufacturers are playing a role in mobile TV deployment. Thus far, I’ve met with a few companies in each of these spaces at NAB, and all have something to offer with regards to mobile TV. more

Axcera introduced the 6X Series liquid-cooled solid-state television transmitter that uses the company’s frequency agile exciter and LDMOS devices for broadband operation across the entire UHF band.

The showed a 6X transmitter that supports 7kW DVB-T, 10kW ATSC and 20kW analog operation on the floor. It will support power levels up to 30kW DVB-T and 40kW ATSC. According to company president David Neff, an important feature of the 6X transmitter is its relatively small form factor.

Axcera also highlighted the fact it’s supporting five different transmission technologies for mobile TV broadcasts with a red-hot car receiving mobile TV broadcast transmission as part of the NAB2008 demonstration of the technology.

Neff discussed mobile TV transmission, the final push to complete the DTV transition in the United States as well as a recently released report from research organization Centris showing that DTV coverage patterns may leave millions of viewers without over-the-air television reception.

Listen to an audio clip from David Neff.