THE FRONT LINE
NAB 2009
Broadcasting becomes less important with each passing year at the NAB show. What’s taking its place?
Plenty of eyes were watching NAB 2009, more as a gauge of the health (or lack thereof) of audio/video/media trade shows than anything else. Following the severe drop-off in attendance at CES 2009, there were plenty of dire forecasts for empty booths, short cab lines (not necessarily a bad thing) and empty parking spaces (again, not a bad thing) at NAB.
In reality, attendance was down noticeably. The “official” pre-registration figure was about 84,000, but it was obvious that even fewer attendees made the trip to Las Vegas. By my own measuring sticks, the Silver parking lot in front of the South Hall was 2/3 empty all week long, there were no lines for the monorail after closing time, and on more than one occasion, I heard LVCC traffic personnel calling out, “Who needs a cab?”
OK, so things were quiet. Or were they? The first day of the show felt like Wednesday, particularly in the Central Hall where you could hear the crickets chirping at times. (I actually did hear a cricket towards the back of the hall — no kidding!) Yet, over in the South Hall, it was elbow-to-elbow near the front entrance on both levels.
Things picked up considerably on Tuesday in all of the exhibit halls. The consensus of manufacturers was that the quality of booth visitors was much higher — less tire-kicking, as seen at previous shows — and that bad economy or not, attendees needed to stay current on new products and technology trends.
The number of attendees was even more impressive when you considered that many broadcast networks and station ownership groups were not paying anyone’s way to the show, and that representative of same companies were footing their own bill.
A game of musical chairs found several manufacturers in new booth locations, ostensibly to balance out traffic flow. Sony occupied a large area at the end of the Central Hall, the same place where it sets up shop for CES, while Canon sprawled out over the middle of the hall, closer to Toshiba, JVC, and Ikegami.
One of the largest booths belonged to Grass Valley (supposedly up for sale). Located at the lower entrance to the South Hall, it was always full of people. Ditto Avid’s upstairs front booth, which took the old Sony slot.
In stark contrast, the upper South Hall foyer, a location that in past years showcased digital (ATSC) TV, was completely empty save for a small concession stand. The only digital TV exhibits this year were in a small pavilion halfway down the Central Hall, and consisted of Mobile ATSC demos and manufacturers.
Figure 1. Sony had this impressive 3.8K LCD monitor demo. It uses a 56-inch LCD screen.
Figure 2. JVC is into 3D in a big way for 2009.
THE TRENDS
In a nutshell, it was easy to get around the show and see the offerings. Several clear trends stood out, starting with a preponderance of MPEG4 (AVC) encoding solutions for everything from cable and satellite signal distribution to IPTV networks and digital signage.
It’s pretty clear that more and more of the worldwide media communications industry is switching over to MPEG4 wherever and whenever possible. MPEG4 is the backbone of the nascent Mobile ATSC standard, and it’s widely used to encode Blu-ray titles. Unfortunately, traditional ATSC broadcasts are stuck with MPEG2 for now. After all, who’s going to pay to replace all those legacy set-top receivers and integrated HDTV sets?
Another trend, and one which doesn’t make a lot of sense (but doesn’t surprise me), is the growing adoption of HDMI interfaces on professional camcorder and video recording products. Given the blurred lines between professional and consumer flat panel displays, it’s probably inevitable that HDMI is finding its way into the marketplace.
Here’s an example: Panasonic showed a new field P2 recorder, the AG-HMR10, which uses MPEG4 encoding and 32GB of SD-HC memory. It costs all of $2,650 and is equipped for HDMI playback, presumably to comparably equipped Panasonic plasma TVs and monitors.
Figure 3. JVC also had the SR-HD1500US,
an all-in-one HDD/SDHC/BD recorder/player, out for
inspection.
Figure 4. It’s obvious that CSI is getting more than its daily adult requirement of fiber.
Yet another clear trend (besides more three-figure and less five-figure price tags) was the preponderance of fiber optic interfaces and switches. It would appear that everyone’s got at least one fiber connection somewhere in their portfolio of products, and they’re starting to make inroads to the professional AV industry.
In fact, there were loads of useful “goesinta, goesoutta” interfaces for just a couple of hundred dollars, including most of the stuff in Blackmagic Design’s booth. How about a combination vectorscope and waveform monitor for $695? (Oh, and it comes with 3 Gb/s HD-SDI and optical fiber inputs.) $149 buys you a simple analog video recorder that encodes to MPEG4 (H.264) for delivery to iPods, iPhones, YouTube, or other IPTV applications. And those were only the tip of the iceberg.
Yet another trend, and one which right now qualifies as a solution in search of a problem, is 3D. There were numerous 3D demos scattered throughout the show, from Panasonic’s 103-inch 3D plasma theater with a live 3D view of the audience to JVC’s 2D-to-3D conversion system. Sony had a nice 3D demo using high resolution imaging, and Wagner Media set up an impressive 3D outdoor LED display in the lower South Hall.
NHK and NICT had a large demo area that featured (among other things) a holographic image, super high-resolution (8K) video, and several variants on 3D including a “glassless” demo. There was also plenty of 3D to see upstairs during the digital cinema sessions.
Figure 5. LG had several of their cellular phones equipped
to receive mobile DTV broadcasts.
I want one!
Figure 6. Need an LCD monitor for your control room? Marshall’s got you covered.
Why the sudden interest in 3D? Because the “wave” from HDTV has just about run out. Like ardent surfers, the industry rode the HDTV “wave” all the way up and onto the beach for the past decade. Now, we’re wondering if we’ll ever see a ride like that again. Is 3D the answer?
Maybe in theaters, where movie studios are rapidly churning out one 3D release after another, and theater chains are installing 3D digital cinema equipment as fast as finances and time allows. But things are likely to move a bit more slowly at home, where it’s almost impossible to encode 3D content for every possible viewing environment. The most likely candidate for 3D to the home is Blu-ray disc, primarily for avid gamers and secondarily for viewing of 3D movies using passive glasses.
There are plenty of hurdles to overcome with real-time 3D delivery of HD content, not the least of which is the bit rate and bandwidth required. 18 Mb/s is barely enough in the ATSC system to handle 1080i sports, and an active system would require double that rate (or the 50% efficiencies of MPEG4 encoding). Cable and satellite systems are similarly hampered.
As for viewing issues, LCD displays still have plenty of motion lag issues, as evidenced by the numerous 3D demos I saw on those screens. That means that whatever picture refresh rate is required to sharpen motion sufficiently (120Hz, 240Hz, etc), it will need to double that rate to deliver active 3D content — or suffer a loss in resolution.
Plasma technology seems to be in better shape here to handle 3D viewing at home, simply because it has none of the viewing angle and motion blurring issues. But plasma phosphors with a fast-decay characteristic must be used for 3D to avoid lag and its associated artifacts.
Speaking of LCD and plasma: The professional video monitor market is in a bit of turmoil right now, with numerous LCD “solutions” being offered across a wide range of prices and your choice of CCFL and LED backlights.
With Canon’s SED initiative largely dormant for now and Field Emissive Technologies’ Spindt FED a casualty of tight bank credit, LCDs are dominating the offerings. Yet, there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that post houses, studios, and networks are buying professional plasma monitors that don’t have all the necessary calibration bells and whistles, and putting them to work anyway — because LCD technology is coming up short in their estimation.
Figures 7a-b. (left) These objects were part of a 3D hologram demo by NICT
that was difficult
to see without a video monitor (right).
THE GOODIES
NAB is fortunate in that it expanded the reach of the show to include all kind of distaff multimedia exhibits fifteen years ago. Good thing, too, as the traditional “broadcasting” part of the show is becoming less important! MPEG4, fiber, 3D, HDMI, 3G HD-SDI — you name it, you could find it someplace in one of the three halls. There was even a vendor selling toy R/C helicopters that could be equipped with 1.2 GHz FM video links!
Here now follows my list of “pick hits” from the show — products that really stood out and captured my imagination.
Communications Specialties showed a 3G version of their Scan Do HD format converter. Yes, it now has 3Gb/s HD-SDI output capabilities, plus an optical fiber output connection (don’t think I’ve seen that on a scan converter before!) for 3G interfacing. CSI also unveiled the FiberLink Matrix, a 32x32 configurable fiber optic routing switcher that supports both multimode and single mode in the same chassis.
Christie featured the Entero, a 2x2, rear-projection single chip DLP video/data wall powered by discrete RGB LEDs. Available in WUXGA (1920x1200) and SXGA+ (1400x1050) resolutions, the Entero cubes produce about 600 lumens of brightness and come in 50-inch, 67-inch, and 72-inch sizes. Christie calls the Entero a “zero maintenance” product, in that they expect the LED arrays to last 50,000 hours before half-life.
Elsewhere in the booth, I found the LW650, a WXGA (1366x800) high-brightness front projector with extreme mechanical lens shift — 3.3x screen areas vertically by 2.2 screen areas horizontally. (Christie OEMs this product from Hitachi, where it’s known as the CP-WX11000.) It’s rated at 6500 lumens.
Figure 8. Christie’s LW650 has an amazing range of lens shift in both axes.
Blackmagic Designs had the $695 UltraScope, which is (according to them) the world’s first 3 Gb/s SDI (and fiber optic SDI) combination vectorscope, waveform analyzer, parade display, audio monitor, luminance histogram display, and real-time viewer with VITC display. It’s a plug-in card that works with Windows PCs and they recommend a 24-inch WUXGA (1920x1080) monitor for viewing.
Extron showed a pair of husky fiber optic switchers. The FOX 4G is a modular design configurable in arrays from 16x16 to 144x144, and can be paired with external DVI, RGB, and SDI/HD-SDI interfaces. Extron’s Fiber Matrix 6400 is a bit more modest with configurations from 8x8 to 64x64 and also works with outboard DVI, RGB, and SDI transmitters and receivers.
JVC unveiled the GY-HM100, which they claim to be the first professional handheld camcorder to record to SD HC media in the native Final Cut Pro format. It weighs all of 3.1 pounds and can master 1920x1080i at 35 Mb/s using MPEG2 compression. 720p and lower bit-rate 1080i formats are also supported, all for (hold onto your hats) $3,995.
JVC also demonstrated the KY-F400, a 4K camera system (3840x2160 1.25” CMOS sensors) that can output 60p frames through both HD-SDI Dual Link (4:2:2/10-bit x 4Ch) and DVI Single Link (4:4:4/8-bit x 4Ch). It was married to a 56-inch 4K LCD monitor. The camera will be available next year for (hold onto your hats again) $200K.
Figure 9. Digitronics had numerous toy helicopters for sale,
equipped with spread-spectrum
video links.
Figure 10. Barco’s RHDM LCD broadcast video monitor commanded attention at the show.
Panasonic’s AVCCAM HD system is gaining adherents, and the AG-HMR10 field recorder/player will be very popular. This recorder uses the MPEG4/AVC codec and records 1920x1080 images using three modes, with the highest quality known as PH and recording on average at 21 Mb/s. It also supports 50 and 60Hx frame rates for 1080i and 720p recording, and the base configuration uses a single 32GB P2 card. It’s ticketed at $2,650. A companion camera head, the AG-HCK10, is yours for $2,100.
Kramer Electronics has another great presentation switcher. The VP-728 supports RGB, composite, and component inputs and scales and switches to either 15-pin VGA or HDMI outputs (there’s that HDMI thing again!). 720p, 1080i, and 1080p output with HDCP through the HDMI connector is standard, along with numerous 4:3 and 16:9/16:10 PC standard resolutions, including 1920x1200. An Ethernet-equipped version, the VP-729, is also available.
Cinnafilm has added more bells and whistles to its real-time film effects processing. In a private demo at the Rennaisance Hotel, they showed real-time grain structure reduction and enhancement with their Dark Energy Optimize processor. Optimize can reduce data payloads by reducing grain and noise from scanned film masters. The Clean process eliminates scratches, dust, fine fibers, and other schmutz from film scans in a fraction of the time that normal cleanup takes.
Pixtree showed a working Mobile ATSC receiver that’s about the size of a large flash drive. It uses MPEG4 decoding and works with a standard desktop or notebook PC. The receiver is fully compliant with the A/153 standard and requires just 5 volts to operate.
Figure 11. You’re looking at an 8K display — four tiled 4K LCD monitors taking nearly 30 Gb/s of data from a specially-equipped NHK camera, fitted with custom Canon lenses.
Telairity featured a pair of real-time H.264 encoders, the BE9100 and BE8100. The 9100 is intended for encoding of 480i or 576i content, while the 8100 is set up for 720p or 1080i HD program sources. Both encoders can perform CBR or VBR encoding as low as 500 kb/s and as high as 8 Mb/s. Encoding latency is spec’ed at less than 150 ms and both units feature “instant on” operation from internal flash memory.
Keisoku Giken showed the UDR100, a stand-alone or snap-on uncompressed digital video recorder. It works with both hard drives and flash memory packs, with the HDD providing 1.5 TB of storage (120 minutes of 4:2:2 or 100 minutes of 4:4:4 recording), and the FLASH pack providing 384 GB of space (32 minutes of 4:2:2) using SD HC card arrays. They also showcased the UDR-20S-8, an 8-channel HD-SDI recorder for mastering uncompressed 4K footage. (Now, THAT’S a lot of data!)
Last but not least, NHK had a demo of ultra-high resolution video, feeding live, 8K resolution (7680x4320 pixels) video from a booth just inside the entrance to Planet Hollywood down to the North Hall, via multiple HD-SDI optical fiber links. The video, refreshing at 60Hz progressive scan, was dumping nearly 30 Gb/s of data into several large screens, including a 2x2 array of tiled 4K LCD monitors. The feed was also down-converted to 4K and 2K resolution with real-time zooming and scrolling demos. Cool stuff!
