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A View From The Road – Volume 2, Number 2
Observations on technology trends from the latest conferences
and seminars.
April 17, 2008
 In
This Edition:
• Getting conned
• NAB 2008
• A conference a day
keeps the apple away
• News from the show
• My pick hits
Have you ever heard the old
joke, “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out?” That’s what came to my mind when I heard
about the recently concluded VoiceCon in Orlando, Florida. Now I’m sure it was an excellent event
and I’m sorry other commitments prevented my attendance this year, but how
can it be a conference about “voice” if just about every major
news release to come out of the show was related to video? Telepresence this and OCS that and which
legacy video firm is announcing what alliance with which traditional IT
firm and on and on. As much as I
like attending conferences I hope there will be some further consolidations
of these many events. In order for
that to happen though, one of the biggest obstacles we’re waiting to get
past is having a certain major manufacturer of Tele”P”resence systems acknowledge that a
legacy video and AV industry actually
exists and seeing them agree to begin speaking to the professionals
that work in it for a living.
In my opinion, the
biggest news to come out of VoiceCon is the
Tandberg – Microsoft story. Peel the
onion on that a bit and you’ll see that there is finally a solution on the
table that can connect all different brands and flavors of video in the
enterprise to make a manufacturer agnostic unified communications
architecture work – including legacy video equipment from Polycom, Tandberg
and anyone else. Tandberg’s roadmap
for their VCS product allows it to replace traditional gatekeepers,
registering all legacy gear and creating proxy registrations on Microsoft’s
OCS server. Neighbored to a Call
Manager infrastructure you could have an interoperable dialplan that allows
SCCP, H.323 and SIP (in any flavor) to register to OCS and seamlessly work
with the MOC client. (I don’t know
what is more amazing – the fact that those last two
sentences are true or that I actually understood them.) It was good to see Tandberg step-up and
license Microsoft’s proprietary RTV codec.
I wonder what everyone else is waiting for.
~~~~~~
I’m writing this
edition of “A View…” from the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters
conference in Las Vegas. This is the 67th time that
this engineering conference has taken place, but the first time in recent
memory that Apple and Avid have chosen NOT to display their products
here. (That’s a big change for Apple
– from keynote last year to no-show this year.) How does one interpret this? Possibly the poor economic environment
has forced these firms to cut back?
Possibly they feel the traditional broadcasters are “old hat” and
not worth the effort? Possibly the
arrangements got lost in one too many management changes? Or is it that there are just too many
darn trade shows and further consolidation is needed as the technologies
merge? One Avid dealer said he was
told by Avid that they “don’t want to waste the millions of dollars it
takes to be here to speak to customers they already know. They’d rather spend the money on smaller,
targeted events.” He believed that
coming to the show with a smaller presence would have been even worse than
not showing up. Whatever the truth
is, I certainly didn’t miss the crowds as I navigated the exhibit
floor. The generation
of people who think television began on the PC were mostly missing, and the
resulting slightly smaller group of attendees represented what one
exhibitor called “true, quality buyers and media market professionals.”
There was lots of
news to come out of the show:
·
There are a couple of new, flash based media systems to
compete with Panasonic’s P2HD.
First, Toshiba and Ikegami have teamed-up on a new system called
“GF” (as in GFcam, GFpac,
etc.) It is a sealed, flash based
device that looks like and old audio cart and can come as large as 64GB
(for around $1,800.)
What’s especially great about this method (other than that the
flash memory stays sealed and protected) is that the cart comes with a
mini-USB connector on the back. Just
connect to it to pull content off when you’re not at a compatible GF player
station.
Sony went the other way for their new XDCAM EX system,
allowing the cameras to record either to disc media, a new SxS flash card, or if needed, a standard Compact Flash memory
card. Think “running to the corner
store” to get more recordable media.
·
The impending February 2009 date for the end of analog
broadcasting is still not being taken seriously enough. Attendees were greeted with reminders to
get their act together.
I’m still very worried about the thousands of corporate TV
distribution systems that will be obsolete in February when, as a result of
the loss of analog, the cable companies begin digitizing their previously
analog signals. What a mess it will
be when most of the businesses that just distributed RF now need a mini headend or a bunch of digital boxes for their employees
to watch TV in the office.
·
The company VBrick (www.vbrick.com), that has been making Streaming and MPEG encode/decode
products for years launched a new class of services for the market at this
show. They suggest the class be
called VSaaS (video streaming as a service) and their VSaaS
product is called VBoss (VBrick online streaming service.)
VBoss is described as the “first and only” complete,
on-line VSaaS that is hosted and managed off
site, with all management, control, security, and end-user GUIs packaged
with traditional CDN services. For
about $3k per month for the first channel, less for each additional, you can
have a live and on-demand streaming solution for your enterprise with none
of the required work. It will be
interesting to see if this model catches on.
·
Cisco came forward and killed an old friend. While Cisco has owned Scientific Atlanta
(the satellite encoder and set-top box experts) for many years, at this
show they officially retired the SA name in favor of their own and began
using a “convergence delivered” theme.
·
We got a glimpse of the future of media acquisition and
distribution at the conference when Steve Kaufman (one of the brightest
media engineering guys I know) went over the details of the Beijing
Olympics Digital Media Production System he built as a digital media
consultant to NBC. The system,
called “The Highlights Factory”, digitally encodes all Olympic competition
in China - as many as 40
simultaneous encodes - every minute of each
competition at each venue - and stores them in a massive storage array in China. Most of it gets streamed live to the web
as well. The stored material is
instantly available in the USA
to digital content producers who can access the footage to screen, log, and
ultimately select individual clips, or build highlight compilations, and
electronically publish them to a variety of digital platforms, including
web, mobile, Amazon, and cable VOD.
Think of content acquisition immediately available in all flavors
and bandwidths to whoever has reserved it and to whoever just discovers
they need it. (There won’t be a lot
more details available about the truly groundbreaking system until after
its use in Beijing,
but feel free to reach out to me if you want me to get you in touch with
Steve.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pick-Hit of the show – another tie:
·
Nemal Electronics (www.nemal.com)
has a new audio snake cable tester that is a tremendous time saver for
troubleshooting audio cables with DT-12 connectors.
What’s amazing and different about this unit is that it’s
built to last, and it identifies the pin /pair numbers that correspond to
each XLR when trying to isolate and fix a problem. It’s amazing that something so simple and
useful has never been done before.
·
Vaddio (www.vaddio.com)
has created a virtual CCU for the current crop of Sony high end industrial
cameras like the BRC H700 and Z700.
Using three UTP cables, they can connect a good quality HD PTZ
camera to a production system and bring it colorimetry
controls and memory settings like a broadcast camera – not to mention SDI
signal transport and PTZ control.
I suspect we’ll start to see these cameras make their way into
broadcast and cable applications at a faster rate than before – especially
where a large number of inexpensive HD images are needed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Also on display
near this year’s NAB – all be it on the higher-end side - was Las Vegas’ first HD
production studio in a truck.
VegasHD (www.vegashd.tv) is
using Sony’s MVP trailer with state of the art equipment, specifically
modified to work in the confines of the Las Vegas strip.
VegasHD already has arrangements
with a number of the casinos and other venues to provide HD video
production services from these unique locations. I toured the truck parked next to the
Planet Hollywood Casino and the Trader Vic’s restaurant on site. They have beautiful background shots from
there including The Bellagio Fountains, the sunset, down the strip, etc.,
all from the shared terrace space that the casino and restaurant are happy
to provide. This is definitely a new
resource to consider for live shots, press tours, high-end meeting
production and distribution, etc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s it for NAB
2008. Look for my reports throughout
the year from the industry conferences and seminars that make the news and
set the future trends.
------------------------------------
A View From The Road is written by
David Danto and contains solely his own opinions. David has spent 30 years
in the audio visual and broadcasting industries. He has designed facilities
for firms such as AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley and NYU. He
is currently the Director of Global Multimedia Engineering for Lehman
Brothers and the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging
Technology. Email David at David.Danto.IMCCA@Danto.com
About the IMCCA
The Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance (IMCCA) is a
not-for-profit user application and industry focused association with
membership comprised of service and product providers, consultants, and
users. Members benefit from the understanding and the use of various
interactive and collaborative communications technologies in their
professional and everyday lives.
For further information please contact Carol Zelkin, IMCCA Executive
Director, at 516-818- 8184 or czelkin@imcca.org. Visit the IMCCA web site
at www.imcca.org
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