Have you ever heard the old joke, “I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out?”  That’s what came to my mind when I heard about the recently concluded VoiceCon in Orlando, Florida.  Now I’m sure it was an excellent event and I’m sorry other commitments prevented my attendance this year, but how can it be a conference about “voice” if just about every major news release to come out of the show was related to video?  Telepresence this and OCS that and which legacy video firm is announcing what alliance with which traditional IT firm and on and on.  As much as I like attending conferences I hope there will be some further consolidations of these many events.  In order for that to happen though, one of the biggest obstacles we’re waiting to get past is having a certain major manufacturer of Tele”P”resence systems acknowledge that a legacy video and AV industry actually exists and seeing them agree to begin speaking to the professionals that work in it for a living. 

In my opinion, the biggest news to come out of VoiceCon is the Tandberg – Microsoft story.  Peel the onion on that a bit and you’ll see that there is finally a solution on the table that can connect all different brands and flavors of video in the enterprise to make a manufacturer agnostic unified communications architecture work – including legacy video equipment from Polycom, Tandberg and anyone else.  Tandberg’s roadmap for their VCS product allows it to replace traditional gatekeepers, registering all legacy gear and creating proxy registrations on Microsoft’s OCS server.  Neighbored to a Call Manager infrastructure you could have an interoperable dialplan that allows SCCP, H.323 and SIP (in any flavor) to register to OCS and seamlessly work with the MOC client.  (I don’t know what is more amazing – the fact that those last two sentences are true or that I actually understood them.)  It was good to see Tandberg step-up and license Microsoft’s proprietary RTV codec.  I wonder what everyone else is waiting for.

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I’m writing this edition of “A View…” from the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas.  This is the 67th time that this engineering conference has taken place, but the first time in recent memory that Apple and Avid have chosen NOT to display their products here.  (That’s a big change for Apple – from keynote last year to no-show this year.)  How does one interpret this?  Possibly the poor economic environment has forced these firms to cut back?  Possibly they feel the traditional broadcasters are “old hat” and not worth the effort?  Possibly the arrangements got lost in one too many management changes?  Or is it that there are just too many darn trade shows and further consolidation is needed as the technologies merge?  One Avid dealer said he was told by Avid that they “don’t want to waste the millions of dollars it takes to be here to speak to customers they already know.  They’d rather spend the money on smaller, targeted events.”   He believed that coming to the show with a smaller presence would have been even worse than not showing up.  Whatever the truth is, I certainly didn’t miss the crowds as I navigated the exhibit floor.  The generation of people who think television began on the PC were mostly missing, and the resulting slightly smaller group of attendees represented what one exhibitor called “true, quality buyers and media market professionals.”

There was lots of news to come out of the show:

·        There are a couple of new, flash based media systems to compete with Panasonic’s P2HD.  First, Toshiba and Ikegami have teamed-up on a new system called “GF” (as in GFcam, GFpac, etc.)  It is a sealed, flash based device that looks like and old audio cart and can come as large as 64GB (for around $1,800.)



What’s especially great about this method (other than that the flash memory stays sealed and protected) is that the cart comes with a mini-USB connector on the back.  Just connect to it to pull content off when you’re not at a compatible GF player station. 

Sony went the other way for their new XDCAM EX system, allowing the cameras to record either to disc media, a new SxS flash card, or if needed, a standard Compact Flash memory card.  Think “running to the corner store” to get more recordable media.

·        The impending February 2009 date for the end of analog broadcasting is still not being taken seriously enough.  Attendees were greeted with reminders to get their act together. 

I’m still very worried about the thousands of corporate TV distribution systems that will be obsolete in February when, as a result of the loss of analog, the cable companies begin digitizing their previously analog signals.  What a mess it will be when most of the businesses that just distributed RF now need a mini headend or a bunch of digital boxes for their employees to watch TV in the office.

·        The company VBrick (www.vbrick.com), that has been making Streaming and MPEG encode/decode products for years launched a new class of services for the market at this show.  They suggest the class be called VSaaS (video streaming as a service) and their VSaaS product is called VBoss (VBrick online streaming service.)

VBoss is described as the “first and only” complete on-line VSaaS that is hosted and managed off site, with all management, control, security, and end-user GUIs packaged with traditional CDN services.   For about $3k per month for the first channel, less for each additional, you can have a live and on-demand streaming solution for your enterprise with none of the required work.  It will be interesting to see if this model catches on.

·        Cisco came forward and killed an old friend.  While Cisco has owned Scientific Atlanta (the satellite encoder and set-top box experts) for many years, at this show they officially retired the SA name in favor of their own and began using a “convergence delivered” theme. 

·        We got a glimpse of the future of media acquisition and distribution at the conference when Steve Kaufman (one of the brightest media engineering guys I know) went over the details of the Beijing Olympics Digital Media Production System he built as a digital media consultant to NBC.  The system, called “The Highlights Factory”, digitally encodes all Olympic competition in China - as many as 40 simultaneous encodes - every minute of each competition at each venue - and stores them in a massive storage array in China.  Most of it gets streamed live to the web as well.  The stored material is instantly available in the USA to digital content producers who can access the footage to screen, log, and ultimately select individual clips, or build highlight compilations, and electronically publish them to a variety of digital platforms, including web, mobile, Amazon, and cable VOD.  Think of content acquisition immediately available in all flavors and bandwidths to whoever has reserved it and to whoever just discovers they need it.  (There won’t be a lot more details available about the truly groundbreaking system until after its use in Beijing, but feel free to reach out to me if you want me to get you in touch with Steve.)

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Pick-Hit of the show – another tie:

·        Nemal Electronics (www.nemal.com) has a new audio snake cable tester that is a tremendous time saver for troubleshooting audio cables with DT-12 connectors.

What’s amazing and different about this unit is that it’s built to last, and it identifies the pin /pair numbers that correspond to each XLR when trying to isolate and fix a problem.  It’s amazing that something so simple and useful has never been done before.

·        Vaddio (www.vaddio.com) has created a virtual CCU for the current crop of Sony high end industrial cameras like the BRC H700 and Z700.  Using three UTP cables, they can connect a good quality HD PTZ camera to a production system and bring it colorimetry controls and memory settings like a broadcast camera – not to mention SDI signal transport and PTZ control. 

I suspect we’ll start to see these cameras make their way into broadcast and cable applications at a faster rate than before – especially where a large number of inexpensive HD images are needed.

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Also on display near this year’s NAB – all be it on the higher-end side - was Las Vegas’ first HD production studio in a truck.  VegasHD (www.vegashd.tv) is using Sony’s MVP trailer with state of the art equipment, specifically modified to work in the confines of the Las Vegas strip. 

VegasHD already has arrangements with a number of the casinos and other venues to provide HD video production services from these unique locations.  I toured the truck parked next to the Planet Hollywood Casino and the Trader Vic’s restaurant on site.  They have beautiful background shots from there including The Bellagio Fountains, the sunset, down the strip, etc., all from the shared terrace space that the casino and restaurant are happy to provide.  This is definitely a new resource to consider for live shots, press tours, high-end meeting production and distribution, etc.

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That’s it for NAB 2008.  Look for my reports throughout the year from the industry conferences and seminars that make the news and set the future trends. 

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