NAB 2011 Sneak Peeks
National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conventions have a history of attracting vast audiences, many of whome come equipped with pens and check books. NAB 2010 alone brought in 88,044 attendees; up from 82,650 the year before.
Mindful of this, exhibitors at NAB 2011 will be unveiling hundreds of new products at the show. Here are some "sneak peeks" at some of them. (Got a product you'll be introducing at the show? Let us know in the comments!)
AmberFin
Quality Control (QC) is front-and-center at AmberFin’s display (Booth # SU4921). Saying that “it isn’t practical for human operators to individually QC the ever-increasing volume of deliverables,” and that “file-based QC software is available but only answers some requirements in the life-cycle of an asset,” AmberFin is taking the wraps off what it calls “the world’s first Unified Media Quality Control System.” This system is apparently designed to provide end-to-end quality control of broadcast assets.
Envivio
Envivio (Booth # SU4302) is releasing an extension of the company’s 4Caster C4 live Encoder and the Envivio Genesis universal mezzanine format at NAB. Details are sketchy at press time, but at Convergence India 2011 in late March, the company talked about its new 4Caster C4 Gen III multi-screen encoder -- said to provide twice the processing power and HD density of previous generation encoders. Could this be what Envivio has planned for NAB 2011?
LiveU
The “newly-enhanced” LU60 video uplink will be spotlighted at LiveU’s location (Booth # SU8808). According to the company, the new and improved LU60 offers sub-second latency; multiple bonded 4G LTE/3G connections; up to 1080 HD video quality; store-and-forward modes; and plays well with all industry-standard power supply systems. LiveU makes it possible for video to be captured live and transmitted over commercial cellular networks.
KIT Digital
KIT Digital (Booth # N6729) will be demonstrating “a single, integrated and socially-enabled lens-to-lens platform” at the show, says the company. They will be doing live interviews with delegates with their mobile camera, to show how it offers more ways “to get your content into the cloud with live streaming, mobile & HD.”
Kulabyte
Kulabyte (Booth # SL10211) is showcasing its Hyperstream live cloud-based video transcoding service. Using a single Flash stream as its source, Hyperstream can deliver multiple output streams at different resolutions, bit rates and frame rates. The platform can output RTMP for Flash, Windows, Mac OS, Linux and Android; HTTP for iPhone, iPad, and Roku set-top-box; RTSP for Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices.
Optibase
Announcing the new MGW Micro Premium encoder! Made by Optibase (Booth # SL4508), this is an “ultra-low latency multi-channel encoder and streamer,” says the company. This is a solid state MPEG-4 H.264 HD/SD video multi-channel that is “designed for the most extreme environments.” It also provides “built-in AES 256-bit encryption of video and data signals, KLV Metadata insertion, HD/SD-SDI, 3G, HDMI, DVI and Composite inputs from a single unit.”
VBrick
VBrick Systems (Booth # SL6305) is unveiling upgraded versions of its Distributed Media Engine (DME) and Rich Media Desktop (RMD) at the show. According to Vbrick, ‘H.264 Distributed Media Engine’ is a platform that extends HD video to mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, across distributed environments without affecting network bandwidth. "Rich Media Desktop" is an integrated desktop video publishing product for creating and distributing live or on-demand content “to an unlimited number of viewers” using desktop computers, smart phones or tablets.
You can find the complete list of NAB 2011 exhibitors and their locations and map locations can be found on the official NAB website.
Companies and Suppliers Mentioned