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A View From The Road – Volume 3, Number 2
Observations on technology trends from the latest conferences
and seminars.
April 22, 2009
 In
This Edition:
• NAB 2009 - The Car Show, The Quiet Show
• The First Time The
Apologists Were Right
• Flash For
Your TV And Refrigerator
• TV For Your Car
• These Amps Go To
Eleven
• New And
Notable - My Pick Hits
Greetings from NAB 2009 – The
National Association of Broadcasters 68th annual conference and
exhibition. Or, as many attending
have named it this year, the Car Show.
Media outlets see themselves as the next domino to fall if the US
auto industry can’t successfully restructure. The car manufacturers have always been
one of the most important sources of advertising revenue at newspapers,
radio stations and television stations and networks. Without that stream of funding there is
not a lot confidence that broadcasters will be buying very much of
anything, much less keeping their payrolls at current levels. These fears were one of the reasons that
there were much fewer attendees here than in the past. Another reason for the low attendance is
the current political spin that views a business trip to Las Vegas as grounds for medieval torture
and execution. Many of the people
that felt they needed to be here (including engineers from the big
broadcast networks) came on their own dime out of fear that there might be repercussions
from asking to go (or because they were told by their employers that if
they wanted to go they had to pay themselves.) I personally don’t understand how the
leaders of media and industry have become so
spineless as to not stand up to the political scapegoating. In any case, bravo to those who attended,
networked, received industry updates and worked at making themselves more
valuable to their employers as well as themselves.
You could easily
tell the attendance was way down by looking at how empty the aisles were -
or by how easy it was to get a bite to eat at a convention center eatery
mid-day (where long lines would usually be the rule.) Remarkably though, this was the first
time that the “attendance apologists” seemed to be right. Exhibitor after exhibitor told me the
same thing – the traffic to their booths was steady - as good as or better
than in years past and full of valuable individuals who were making serious
inquiries. In addition, because of
the lack of crowding in their booths, they were able to spend quality time
with these attendees. It seems the
ones who stayed home may not be the ones that really need to be here in the
first place.
~~~~~
One of the more
interesting announcements to come out during the show was from Adobe, who
unveiled their Flash Platform for the Digital Home Software. It is intended to go into chips in
consumer TVs, disk players, and home appliances with embedded screens
allowing those traditional devices to play Flash video files without the need
of a PC or browser. Many chipmakers
and media firms have agreed to support the format. This has the potential to be somewhat
game-changing…
~~~~~
 Now that the screen on your refrigerator will be able to show
videos, it only makes sense that your car can now show Cable TV. A joint venture of ATT, Intelsat and RaySat revealed a new service at the show that is
available right now - AT&T CruiseCast ( www.cruisecast.com
.)
The antenna – which
looks like a party bowl for chips turned upside down – attaches to your
luggage rack and connects to a receiver that can be buried in your
car. The whole system costs about
$25 (but it assumes you already have video displays in your car – that
could add one to two hundred if you need to purchase aftermarket
in-headrest monitors.) The service
of about 40 channels will cost about $30 monthly. I’m not sure how many subscribers they
will have or how many they will need to break even, but it is a good
milestone - we have lived long enough to see live TV to our cars.
~~~~~
I know I’ve made
past references to Spinal Tap’s guitar amps that “go to eleven” instead of
ten, but there’s really no other fitting analogy here. If SD TV was not good enough for you, and
720P HD was not good enough for you, and 1080P is not good enough for you,
and digital cinema at 4K doesn’t float your boat either, then
thank your lucky stars for NHK’s new TV format “Super Hi-Vision.” (Not just Hi-Vision mind
you, but “Super” Hi-Vision – Emphasizing the word Super as Wiley Cyote did when he referred to himself as “Super”
genius.) NHK refers to this
breakthrough as “the never ending evolution of television.” It boasts “an ultra high definition
system with 7680 x 4320 pixels and 22.2 multichannel sound.” (Now “Ultra High Definition” or UHD would
have been perfectly OK by me as a name, but no, that’s only the description
- the name again is “Super Hi-Vision.”)
How did it look you ask? Um,
super? Honestly the whole thing
looked soft to me and not much better than the 4k images I’ve seen, but it
was bigger and had all those “super” pixels, so I guess it must have really
been better regardless if anyone was able to tell or not. I wanted to show a picture here, but my
iPhone camera is hardly “super” so I realized it would not do justice.
~~~~~
There did not seem
to be as many new products as I have seen in years past, but there were
some pretty cool ones. Here are my
pick hits for this year:
·
 Aja Video introduced their KiPro (pronounced key-pro) portable digital recorder
for video cameras. It fits neatly
under any manufacturer’s camera and directly records files in Apple’s ProRes codec. No
more re-rendering footage before using in Final Cut Pro.
It’s a versatile recorder that can take SDI or HDMI or FireWire, SD,
HD 720 or 1080 and can be controlled from a browser or iPhone via
Wi-Fi. Very cool at about $4k with a
250G drive.
·
JK Audio introduced the “BlueKeeper”
– a wireless audio gateway and mixer that can function jut like a an audio control device for telephones (mix
microphones, callers, playback to remote side, etc.) but connects to any
Cell phone via Bluetooth.
At $495 this is
an excellent news and remote production tool.
·
 Extron was at this show displaying
some of their crossover (broadcast – AV support) products. They had two really spectacular new
products. The first one – their
“annotator” is a hardware based telestrator type product – able to intake live video
from any source and highlight and/or draw on it, or freeze it and then work
over the freeze.
The second one is called their MPX Plus matrix switcher. It is notable as their first foray into
DSP based, PC controllable audio processing. It is a true challenge to the manufacturers
already in that space.
·
 Finally Wohler showed their
new “flagship” AMP-16 monitoring systems.
These audio/video/signal/metering/ processing/ switching
confidence monitors are unique for their use of FPGAs
(Field Programmable Gate Array) chips that can be reprogrammed to do any
type of monitoring and /or signal evaluation. A real breakthrough in this type of
product.
~~~~~~
That’s it for this
edition of A View From The Road.
Look for the next one in June around InfoComm time – with a special mention
of the IMCCA’s second annual Telepresence Day at
InfoComm.
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A View From The Road is written by
David Danto and contains solely his own, personal 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,
NYU and Lehman Brothers. He has recently joined JPMorgan Chase &
Company and is 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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