NEWS
FLOOR SHOW
Observations from NAB's Vast Exhibit Space
story and photos by Pam Malouf, ACE
 Quantel's booth. |
This April’s NAB 2007 was the third-largest show ever by the National Association of Broadcasters, with over 108,000 attendees. It was held at the Las Vegas Convention center, which has 3.2 million square feet of meeting and exhibit space. Talk on the floor was that if you walked up and down each aisle through all three convention halls, both levels, you would have walked 25 miles. I believe it, since I walked a lot of it. These are my impressions.
The dominant theme was “systems management and integration” (digital media solutions): how broadcasters can share, protect, convert, manage, encode and transcode their content. With interactive TV and television content now going not only to TV sets but to the Internet, cell phones and laptops, broadcasters have quite a challenge streaming their product to the various media worldwide while storing it in an accessible place, maximizing bandwidth, providing options of high definition and standard definition, as well as security.
Most Interesting Items
Ultra-HD: High definition has three basic resolutions: 720x480, 1280x720 and
1920x1080 (also referred to as 2K by 1K). These numbers refer to the horizontal
and vertical rows of pixels. Now there is Ultra-HDTV, which offers a resolution
of 7680x4320 (also referred to as 8K by 4K) and is 16 times clearer than HDTV!
Ultra-HDTV cameras and displays will require 32 million pixels. Ultra-high-speed
HDTV cameras that operate at 1 million fps (that’s one million frames
per second!) with high sensitivity are under development, as are ultra-high-sensitivity
HDTV cameras targeted for use in nighttime and for emergency broadcasts.
A demonstration of Ultra-HD on a 33.3-foot screen showed (among other things) a football field where each of the players was crystal clear; you could see everything perfectly and it felt like you were sitting right there in a stadium seat! It is said that Ultra-HDTV video is so realistic and powerful that it will change the way we live––and one executive termed this the evolution of “Tele-Vision” (enabling a viewer to see a distant location) to “Tele-Sense” (enabling a viewer to virtually be at that location).
Fluid Mask (www.vertustech. com): This software can be used as a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop or as a stand-alone program. It can see differences in color texture and saturation, so instead of using the cut-out tool (for matting), Fluid Mask cuts it out for you so you can instantly change the background of complex images such as behind someone’s hair or a pile of leaves or tree branches. It utilizes breakthrough technology, which mimics the way the eye and brain perform visual processing.
IPTV Content Security: This is forensic marking for consumer content delivery via the Internet or satellite––in other words, digital watermarking. In layman’s terms, encrypted information is embedded into every frame to help identify the source of unauthorized copies and trace them back to the last legal recipient of the legitimate content owner. More information on content security can be found at www.usvo.com or www.irdeto.com. Irdeto’s parent company, Naspers, is a multi-national media and entertainment giant with annual revenues of $2.25 billion. It operates PayTV and media technology companies on five continents.
 The GY-HD250U, a 3-D high-definition camera featuring genlocking, interchangeable lenses and a direct HD-SDI output. Images taken can be displayed in real-time on a 3-D high-definition reference monitor. |
DVB-T2: This new Digital Video Broadcasting standard (deliverable in 2009) will have 30 percent more payload capacity than DVB–T and will work perfectly with the new generation of satellites being launched specifically for multi-channel high-definition television. Different broadcasters, based on their receivers and antennas, can pick up the same TV show but in different quality.
Most Interesting New Terminology
IPTV: Internet Protocol Television (TV that comes through the Internet).
MoTV: Television broadcasting on your mobile cell phone.
Mobisodes: Episodic programming designed for your mobile cell phone.
Webisodes: Episodic programming designed for your home computer.
BPO: Business Process Outsourc-ing (establishing off-shore centers to lower
costs).
Check your vitals: To check your e-mail, MySpace, Facebook, blog, and/or any
daily essential websites.
Best Booths
ArtBeats.com had the
best stock library footage booth (3,000 square feet), with dozens of screens
displaying its footage and a live demonstration on how to key the shots of
leaves or clouds with your own footage. The footage is royalty-free––with
a one-time multi-use fee––and can be viewed on the web. Low-resolution
downloads for temporary usage are applied to your final purchase.
 Motion Analysis, a leader in 3-D motion capture systems, hosted a booth demonstrating one of its techniques. |
Avid showcased itself with a 14,400-square-foot booth, complete with a “Create Now” glass-enclosed area (decorated with lava lamps) housing a camera, shooting stage and tables with editing equipment, where you could shoot and edit on-the-spot. Avid also had numerous “stations,” including Post-Production, Independent Production, 3-D, Teaching, DVD authoring, Script Program, Mastering, HD-encoding, DNX Exchange, Avid on the Mac and more––each with its own equipment and instructors.
Quantel calls itself “the best provider to help you achieve your goal of digital nirvana––the one content universe.” To demonstrate nirvana, the company had a circular dining area with Chinese lanterns, black and silver art deco bar stools and tables, and a complimentary coffee/ snack bar––all surrounded by flowing day-glow orange vertical blinds.
Music library booths included Killer Tracks, Non-Stop Music, Megatrax, Groove Addicts, Opus 1, Production Music and 5 Alarm Music. But the best one was Firstcom. The company had an area filled with electric massage chairs where weary NAB convention goers could sit and relax while listening to music. Firstcom’s online website allows you to search by tempo, genre and eras––even by word––and most song fees are all inclusive. The swag was a small red couch with a CD, in honor of Firstcom’s newly acquired music company, Roadside Couch Records.
Alas, the biggest booth has to go to Sony with 51,750 square feet! There
was a large portable sound stage truck, a theatre, stations for everything
and cell phones on display streaming TV shows and newscasts. Sony also had
a sound stage with cameras hooked up to bays where you could cut what was
being shot. And there was still room for a coffee bar.
Best Swag
MediaZone.com, which
offers (at a reasonable price) Internet TV with sports and international entertainment
from around the world that can’t be found on regular TV, gave away blue
canvas backpacks.
United Ad Label, which allows you to order any and all types of custom labels
for your tapes or DVDs on its website, gave away little white note pads.
There were lots of pen giveaways, but the Schneider Optics (“It all
starts with the glass”) pen had a tiny baseball on top, which you could
squeeze to release stress. The baseball motif complements Schneider’s
campaign that it is a “home run” for lenses and lens accessories.
The Hollywood Edge Sound Effects Library (www.hollywoodedge.com) only gave away sample CDs, but it did announce that if you have lost one of its sound effects CDs, you can call the company and it will replace your disc at a huge discount. Also, Hollywood Edge will break up any of its sound effects sets, so editors can create their own personalized sets––just pick what you want and the company will make you a deal.
How can I not mention the blue and gray M&Ms offered by Microsoft?
If all this sounds interesting to you, next year’s NAB is scheduled for April 14-17, 2008.
Pam Malouf, ACE, is a Picture Editor, an Associate Director and a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at pamedit@aol.com.
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