Broadcast Engineering Editorial Director Brad Dick has arrived in Las Vegas, but not without incident. more…

Thanks for joining us at Broadcast Engineering’s BE@NAB blog! We’ve got loads of information and resources to help you gear up for the country’s largest trade show for broadcasting professionals.

Here are just a few of the ways we’re serving you this year:

Broadcast Engineering’s Briefing Room: Check out the Briefing Room for the latest show news, company announcements and product updates straight from the companies themselves.

BETV: Watch product demonstrations, interviews and more from last year’s NAB Show, and stay tuned for more videos from this year’s show starting Monday, April 12.

BE@NAB: You’re here! Let us bring the 2010 NAB Show straight to you. Check here for daily updates providing company news, first-hand accounts, industry analyses, interviews, videos and more.

NAB Update: Get the latest show news from our seasonal newsletter that runs weekly through May 13.

Brad on Broadcast: Follow Broadcast Engineering editorial director Brad Dick as he navigates the sea of content leading up to NAB and keeps tabs on industry developments.

Excellence Awards: You chose them, so check out the winners of our annual Excellence Awards at NAB.

Pick Hits: Broadcast Engineering’s annual best-of-show awards will be presented at the NAB Show on Thursday, April 15.

Broadcast Engineering Forum: Looking to connect with other industry professionals and Broadcast Engineering readers? Start a discussion in the forum and make your predictions for what’s going to be hot at the 2010 NAB Show.

Whether you can’t make it to the NAB Show this year, or you just want the in-depth coverage and industry insight that Broadcast Engineering provides, stick with us at BE@NAB, where we’ll bring the show to you.

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…