SECURITY IS PRETTY TIGHT at large American gatherings these days and the National Association of Broadcasters show is no different. Media had to be pre-registered well in advance (no chance of registering on-site) and local police were very interested in the publication bins for some reason at about 8 a.m. We saw a police sniffer dog go through each and every bin searching for, well, who knows? It was a big German Shepherd and we weren’t about to bug him and his handler to ask. If the pooch was trained to find beer, however, he certainly would have parked himself in the Canadian Suite at Harrah’s (see photos below).
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The tributes to the "Big Three" broadcast anchors, Dan Rather (CBS), Tom Brokaw (NBC) and the late Canadian Peter Jennings (ABC), were heartfelt, excellently done and a bit of a history lesson in just a few minutes. Each video vignette of each anchor shown before their individual award presentation was stunning in how much a part of history each man has been during the last 40 years. Rather ducking for cover in Viet Nam. Brokaw interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev and Jennings talking to locals in Serbia. It showed that these men weren’t anchors sitting in their ivory towers, they were journalists not afraid to get their hands dirty and deserved the distinguished service awards given to them Monday morning by the NAB.
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It’s interesting to note that American radio stations are talking about a rapid move into digital terrestrial radio down here. The conversion is not just about better sound with the HD Radio platform U.S. broadcasters have decided to go with (unlike the stalled DAB rollout in Canada), but about adding more radio signals. Using the digital spectrum and modern compression, local radio stations are able to offer multiple stations to listeners – narrower niches of programming with a local flavor to them – that therefore allow them to compete better with satellite radio and other forms of audio. Where is this in Canada, I wonder? Granted there is much consumer education to do and U.S. broadcasters will require automotive deals for digital receivers, but according to NAB president David Rehr, these talks are in progress already. If that happens, one wonders how Canadian broadcasters can stick with DAB since those receivers and cars will spill over the border.
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NAB president Rehr sounded the alert on Monday morning, urging members to contact their own members of congress – rightnow. The American Cable Association (a group of independent U.S. cable operators), said Rehr, is behind a bill being brought to congress on Thursday which threatens to cut the power broadcasters have when it comes to retransmission consent (fee for broadcast signal carriage) rules. The organization had pink sheets of paper with the office and e-mail addresses of all American congressmen and -women and Rehr asked all in attendance to urge a no vote in e-mails "today."
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Two Canadian suppliers perhaps better known (until now) for supplying the cable and telecom world, are down at NAB in full force pushing their broadcast wares. As has been covered in cartt.ca, Power & Telephone Supply of Canada has rounded out its five-person broadcast team with recent hires and have been pushing hard into that market. ATX Technologies chairman Mark Beggs was also in the Canadian Suite at Harrah’s as ATX (with its ownership of Novanet and recent purchase of LARCAN) is on a broadcast supply mission, too.
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Montreal’s Miranda Technologies, which, among other products, manufactures products that allow broadcasters to manage and switch content and generate live graphics to air (such as branding and dynamic text), announced on the show’s first day – Saturday – that it will buy VertigoXmedia, another Montreal company which specializes in the field of graphics automation solutions for broadcast television, cable and digital signage for $11 million. VertigoXmedia’s 25 employees will join Miranda’s 350.
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During a presentation called "The Digital Home and the Future of Broadcasting, Intel Corp.’s content services GM Kevin Corbett made special mention – and demonstrated – a unique new 3-D EPG technology. It’s a bit hard to describe given the parameters of the usual EPG because Intel’s looks and acts nothing like one. Picture a fish-eye camera lens look – or a 360-degree view of – the walls of a video rental store. Each piece of TV content or movie is arranged like a convex, on-screen shelf to which viewers can point and highlight with their remote control to preview video in the little screen and select content. It may be VOD content. It may be a linear channel. It’s point and click to get metadata or the content itself.
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It’s worth noting, I think, that U.S. broadcasters view free HD, that is, over-the-air delivered HD, as a competitive advantage as the media world continues its massive transition to digital. Free OTA HD is "one of the most pristine signals they can receive," said NAB president Rehr. "(Consumers) need to know what DTV multicast channels will bring in terms of choice and services." Some Canadian broadcasters, as cartt.ca readers will recall, have other ideas about what to do about rebuilding their OTA infrastructure to digital.
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We didn’t get to see too much of the massive show floor on Monday but we saw enough to know that the Thomson/Grass Valley booth was overflowing (see photo). The main interest was the company’s big reveal – its new Infinity camcorder. The new product removes the last bit of the broadcast production puzzle that was still all-linear – the camera. The Infinity (about US$23,000) is an IT-immersed SD/HD multi-format camcorder that is open. That is, users will be able to choose video formats, compression codecs, recording media and connectivity. The camera is the first to use both removable storage disks and professional solid-state memory as recording and playback media, says the company. Traditional video I/O (SDI, HD-SDI, and CVBS) as well as interfaces provide the ultimate in connectivity. The camcorder can connect to external storage devices or PCs via USB or FireWire. Or it can connect to a network via Gigabit Ethernet. The company isn’t yet ready to announce sales just yet, director of strategic marketing Mike Wolschon told www.cartt.ca, but he expects announcements on the sales of "hundreds" of the Infinity camcorders to come soon.
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Surf back here throughout the week as we make our way around the show floor to some of the other major manufacturers (SONY, Panasonic, Harris, etc. etc. etc.). For now, enjoy a few snapshots of folks in the popular Canadian Suite at Harrah’s, sponsored by dozens of industry companies (including cartt.ca) and as always, organized by Applied Electronics. Photos by Greg O’Brien.
ATX Incorporated CEO Mark Beggs with Capital Networks president Bil Trainor.
Channel Zero’s Cal Millar and Brian Boyle.
Power & Telephone Canada’s Jean Desrosiers.
