The 2011 NAB Show will once again be a rallying point, information center and showcase for all things mobile DTV. Several events will be of particular interest to anyone interested in the current status of mobile DTV and its evolution in the coming months.
Sunday will be a big day for mobile DTV. As part of the Broadcast Engineering Conference in Room S219, implementing mobile DTV will be the topic from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Starting with ATSC vice president for standards development Jerry Whitaker, who will present a status report on the rollout of mobile DTV, the conference will include numerous presentations on the technicalities and benefits of mobile DTV systems. Dennis Wallace, managing partner of Meintel, Sgrignoli, & Wallace, will discuss the current field-testing projects on the ATSC M/H standard. At 2 p.m., Harris broadcast systems technologist Jay Adrick and Harris project engineer for TV transmission products Joe Seccia will look at a wide range of possible solutions for the architecture of ATSC Mobile DTV gap fillers, repeaters and translators, and t 2:30 p.m., S. Merrill Weiss will discuss updating studio-to-transmitter links for mobile DTV. ALIVE Telecom director of engineering Daniel Barton will focus on the viability of mobile handset content delivery with the assistance of a distributed antenna repeater system.
At 3:30 p.m., Triveni Digital CTO Rich Chernock will speak at “Non-Obvious Concerns for Adding Mobile DTV to a Broadcast Station,” and at 4 p.m., Vimionix mobile TV services co-founder Aldo Cugnini, Broad Comm founder Louis Libin and Tsar Digital principal Robert Rast will describe about how broadcasters can reap new revenue streams specifically through the interactive features of mobile DTV. Last, Globo TV network engineer Francisco Peres will report on the implementation of the DTV standard adopted in Brazil.
On Monday, two panels will focus on mobile TV. In Room N115, the Mobile Excellence Awards and Mobile Monday will present a panel on creating entertainment content for mobile platforms, featuring Warner Bros. head of mobile Natalie Farsi, Mobile500 Alliance executive director John Lawson, AEG Network Live President John Rubey, Omelet partner Steve Amato, SNL Kagan analyst John Fletcher and Hub TV senior vice president of digital content and crossplatform entertainment John Roberts, moderated by MobilizedTV editor Debra Kaufman.
On Monday at 2:30 pm in Room S222, Gary Arlen will moderate the panel “Mobile TV: A Path to the Future” panel with Saul Berman, IBM global strategy and change services leader of IBM Global Business Services; SNL Kagan analyst John Fletcher; Ronen Jashek, vice president of marketing at Siano Mobile Silicon; Randa Minkarah, senior vice president of revenue and business development at Fisher Communications; and Erik Moreno, senior vice president of corporate development at Fox. This panel will consider questions germane to mobile DTV, such as if consumers will pay subscription fees, the types of content feasible for the small screen, how much time consumers will spend watching TV on mobile devices and what the business models are.
The NAB Show will also be a showcase for new gear for mobile DTV from a range of companies. Triveni Digital (in Booths SU3202 and N4036A) will highlight its new ESG carouselling interface for multiplexers as part of its GuideBuilder metadata generation and management system. The company will also showcase the StreamScope RM-40 Mobile Dashboard, a new Web-based interface that gives engineers secure mobile access to StreamScope RM-40 stream comparison and visualization data and tools via iPhone, iPad and Android-powered devices.
Rohde & Schwartz (in Booth SU3721) will show a complete portfolio of products for ATSC Mobile DTV, ISDB-T(B) and DVB-T2 that includes the R&S AEM100 multiplexer for ATSC Mobile DTV networks. The company has also added new products to its test and measurement portfolio, including its first test solution for ATSC Mobile DTV, tyhe R&S ETL, which features new functions for performing all the measurements required when installing TV transmitters and cable headends. The R&S ETL is also ideal for QA testing of transmitters and modulators during production. Rohde & Schwartz will also conduct live demonstrations of software for the offline analysis of compressed audio and video signals and MPEG-2 transport streams. A press breakfast will be held on April 11, at 9 a.m.
