LAS VEGAS—TV Technology asked a cross-section of NAB Show-goers a series of five questions regarding what they considered the main themes, evidence of those, whether or not these initiatives will take hold, and what promising technologies from past NAB Shows did not see daylight. (A complete list of quotes from respondents and links to their full 5Qs is at “NAB 2016 in 21 Quotes.”)
Karl Paulsen, chief technology officer of Diversified:
Q1.How many NAB Shows have you attended?
K.P. Since 1976, 39 years’ worth—maybe missed no more than two or three between 1978-1994—but continuous from 1995 onward.
Q2. What, in your opinion, were the main themes of the show this
year?
K.P. Interoperability, IP-video is here, we may be beginning to solve the automatic metadata capture issue, cloud based solutions are viable and available but the whole story is still incomplete, drones and VR are a big deal, at least for now.
Q3.What were some examples of these themes?
K.P. Evertz and Sony joining AIMS, but both holding on to some of their roots in ASPEN and NMI SAM, Lawo, and others are providing IP-centric products you can order today. Arista, Cisco and others are joining the IP-bandwagon for network switches, but for Cisco, it’s a very small part of their total product line. Audio vendors are starting to pay attention on how “their” particular adaptations of AES67 (Dante and others) may affect their next-generation product offerings.
GrayMeta and MOG are both showing means to capture metadata through entire systems and then “work on it” from a search, discovery and registration perspective. (This may cross into the IP-metadata/ANC-data domain in the next few years.)
Cloud is still everywhere. Pebble showed an actual full demo on how to spin up their systems in a full-on cloud environment (they were not alone); while others (Harmonic with VOS365 and
VOSCloud; Imagine with the same story as last year) are making headway but still have a few missing pieces.
IBM is beginning to figure into this big time; given they have more pieces of the puzzle than others, including now long-line and last-mile fiber connectivity.
Q4. Do you foresee any or all of these technologies or initiatives taking hold?
K.P. Once settled from a standards adoption perspective, TR-03 as it becomes SMPTE 2110 may drive interoperability for the next generation of video transport to success across most of the current vendors playing in this space.
How these systems are marketed and built out requires new expertise and experience, which most users/owners/facilities lack (and many systems integrators as well). How to make money from a reseller/expertise perspective is an interesting discussion. Changing the landscape for systems integrators will need to be thoroughly analyzed as we transition from a hardware/design-build to a software/consult-configure-deploy/support perspective.
Q5. What technology that impressed you most at a past show didn’t see the light of day?
K.P. Fixed-based/hardware-centric traditional broadcast automation is dying a slow-but-sure death. The quad VTR is definitely dead.
