David J. Danto
Principal
Consultant, Collaboration/ AV / Multimedia / Video / UC
Dimension Data
Director of
Emerging Technology
Interactive
Multimedia & Collaborative Communications Alliance
eMail:
David.Danto@DimensionData.com Follow Video &
Technology Industry News: @NJDavidD
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Read my full 2013 NAB show report -
A View From The Road Volume 7, Number 3 by Clicking
Here
Notes
From NAB 2013
Greetings from the 2013 National Association of
Broadcasters Conference in Las Vegas. As
I mentioned in last
year’s show wrap-up this is still really a conference in search of a
definition. Although heavily attended
(92K + registered this year) it is more like watching a “Battlestar Galactica Ragtag Colonial Fleet” than a cohesive
assembly of focused exhibitors and attendees.
The theme of the show is “Metamorphosis”, which really seems more like a
fervent aspiration than a statement of fact.
As one example, what does it
say about a “broadcast” conference that is using a smart device as its on-site
signage imagery? The conference is now
really much more about media content creation and management than it is about
broadcasting. NAB members are in a state
of near panic over the significant growth of “Zero
TV Homes.” "Getting broadcast
programing on all the gizmos and gadgets - like tablets, the backseats of cars,
and laptops - is hugely important," an NAB spokesman was quoted as
saying. It is well past time for this
conference to change its name.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the themes that emerged early in the conference
was 4K. 4K or
Ultra HD (UHD) was everywhere! You can’t spit without hitting a sign,
poster, flyer or person hawking how great this next innovation will be.
UHD images are fantastic, but there is still no practical
way to deliver UHD programming to homes, so it is all a bit of the cart way
before the horse. Sony announced their
plans for a DTH UHD service to be
available this year at January’s CES conference, but there have been precious few
details released past the initial announcement.
Still, as Broadcast Engineering put it in their tweet, “If you aren't
early on 4K, you're already late. Big dogs pushing hard now.”
I’m also seeing tacit acknowledgement of the “Changing
flow of Storytelling” theme that I reported came out of the International CES
Show in January – consumers now take in their content differently, and are
not going back to sitting together on their sofa watching TV for hours. Both “second screen” content
and the alternate distribution methods I referred to above are very important
topics to the content providers here.
There is an underlying sense of desperation that these concepts must be
embraced if providers don’t want to be left behind.
From what I’ve heard from the sessions, that many of the
TV broadcasters here are upset about this and other things. I’ve herd comments like “I’m only going to
upgrade once, and it will only be because the change will directly tied to
increased revenue.” There is a fear that
any move to a 4K/UHD production workflow will be made
obsolete by 8K technologies closely following behind. There is a great reluctance to invest without
a sense that there will be clear ROI.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Many broadcasters are not just upset, but actually
combative about another new technology / service – Barry Diller’s Aereo. If you haven’t heard about it, Aereo is a service that will rent you a tiny over-the-air
TV receiver the size of a chip. You can
use it to watch TV as if you were at the receiver site – change channels, set
your DVR, etc. – and stream it to your PC or
connected device/display.
Available currently only in the New York area, Aereo has come up with a technology so small that they can
fit massive numbers of these receivers into a small space. They charge users only for the use of the
technology, not for programming. They
feel that if you were at the location with any over-the-air receiver you
wouldn’t be charged for programming, so there is no need to charge you for it
if all they’re doing is giving you remote access to one. The broadcasters - well – don’t agree. Many of them have taken legal action against Aereo for theft of programming – but so far Aereo has prevailed in the court
decisions. The broadcasters feel
that Aereo needs to pay them for the use of their
programming – like any other television program distributor. Chase Carey, the president and COO of News
Corp, said here that if the broadcasters are not successful in getting this “stealing [of their] signal” to stop Fox
would consider entirely doing away with the broadcast TV model and make Fox
programming available only as a subscription service. CBS CEO Leslie Moonves
was also quoted
as having agreed with the comment, and also has threatened to cut his New
York over-the-air signal if no remedy is found.
That all probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon, but the clear
acknowledgement that there is more revenue for a programmer in alternate
distribution than in traditional methods has reverberated throughout the
attendees here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As far as the technologies on display here go, there is a
lot to talk about. In a general sense,
Cloud Services is a hot topic here. NAB
hawked cloud in 2011 (as
I covered in my 2011 show report) without many real products / services to
show. Now two years later the hype has substantially died down but there are
significant number of exhibitors with high quality solutions. Services and products to securely manage and
distribute media off-site are available and compelling.
For some specific highlights of technologies and/or
products on display:
·
The Chyron Corporation – longtime leader in traditional TV
graphics – has merged with Hego and become ChyronHego. They are showing some very compelling
products here, including their PlayerTracking System.
This system can watch the
action on a sports field (or anywhere for that matter) and track the location
and motion of any or all persons or objects.
They are currently using it to produce real time graphics – such as the
players’ speed, distance from each other, acceleration, number of scoring
attempts, etc. – as
the system independently tracks all activities as they happen. The possibilities that this technology brings
lead me to think that they have only scratched the surface of useful
applications.
·
There were a number of companies with
compelling new products in digital image monitoring and functional
distribution. Ensemble Design’s BrightEye NXT 430, Plura’s SFP-217-3G, and this little gem from Decimator Design
The DMON-4S can give you any
combination of four SDI inputs to four HDMI outputs,
showing a quad-split of any images. The
competing products are all very nice but are in the $4K range. This little beauty is $700.
·
Adorama had
a prototype Samsung display in its booth.
This is the only true 4K LCD
/ edge lit LED 85” display in the US. It
has a list price of about $45K, prompting someone on Twitter to comment “Just
45K? Does it come with a lifetime
warranty for that price?” I share it as
it highlights the divergence between where the manufacturers are (big screen,
super-high quality, expensive) and typical consumers are (small screen,
streaming-video quality, little or no cost.)
The number of young households (or shared apartments) without
traditional TVs is at its highest point ever.
·
Sony showed a number of technologies, but one
that really stood-out was the HXR-NX30U Palm Sized
Camcorder.
Sony really got this one
right – it has a very reasonable cost (under $2K street price) and combines
excellent quality with leading edge features – such as a built in pico-projector to display what’s been shot on a wall or
screen.
·
A new company – Darim – introduced a new modular system for
creating studios
Their MicroStations
come in a number of sizes and shapes.
These reduce the entry level costs of creating a studio for broadcast or
streaming use to a fraction of what it used to be.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s it from NAB this year. My next View From The
Road will be from InfoComm
in Orlando – June 11th through 14th. I’m scheduled to be both a panelist
and moderator at various events. The
IMCCA will again host the Unified Collaborative Conferencing
Pavilion, and my Dimension Data
colleagues will be there as well where we’ll be providing insights from our
latest Unified
Communications Research.
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This
article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own,
personal opinions. David has over 30 years of experience providing problem
solving leadership and innovation in media and unified communications
technologies for various firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic
worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan
Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He now works with Dimension Data as their Principal
Consultant for the collaboration, multimedia, video and AV disciplines. He is
also the IMCCA’s Director of
Emerging Technology. David can be reached at David.Danto@Dimensiondata.com
or DDanto@imcca.org and his full bio and
other blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info. Please reach-out to David if you would like
to discuss how he can help your organization solve problems or develop a
future-proof collaboration strategy.