Faithful listener and long time
contributor to the show Ed Stouffer graciously agreed to be our
“man on the street” - or “man on the convention show floor” if you
prefer, at this year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas. The show just wrapped
up, running from April 16-21. For those who aren’t familiar, NAB is
the National Association of Broadcasters and the NAB Show is their
annual gathering to see, learn about and talk about all the latest
innovations in audio and video production, broadcasting and
TV Trends – some of my views from NAB 2016
4K going wide and deep in the broadcast market with a
big push to consumers building.
This has several components, so
I will try to describe them, and what they mean.
Several presentations talked about
35mm motion picture film stock having a native resolution right
about 4K. Decent prints can be scanned with minimal cleanup. Older
prints will take some work, just like what happened when HD
versions of older material were released. As for new material,
there was a general consensus that most mainstream content is
moving to 4K capture or is already there. In many cases, the
editing is either downconverted to HD or that is the export In the
Canon “mega-booth” – which spanned 2 levels and had amateur, pro-am
and professional cameras on display - they showed excerpts from
several 4K movies shot partially or entirely in 4K, along with some
TV episodes, such as “Homeland.”
The net is that while broadcasts
are not 4K today, 4K streaming via Amazon and Netflix will have
more options as less work in the future is required when the
original material is in better shape. As for fixed media, the
UltraHD BluRay players have cracked the $500 price point, with the
Samsung generating a lot of interest at $399. Christmas 2015, they
were $5,000, so the start toward commodity is rapidly coming.
Manufacturers I talked with showing the under-$500 players said
they generally expect a $250 UHD BluRay player for Christmas 2016.
Also, the manufacturers expected that most of the UHD BluRay
players will support 4K clients for Netflix & other services,
so consumers will also use them as streaming devices for
Broadcast. The chicken’s egg has hatched! ATSC 3.0 is
the new specification and it includes support for 4K broadcasts,
including HDR, 24-channel audio, etc. I talked briefly with a
technical director for a major US network and they are actively
looking for a pilot at one affiliate this year. As I understand the
spec – not close to being a SME by any measure – it takes the
equivalent of 2 HD digital channels for one broadcast, depending
upon compression used. (The folks in the ATSC booth said twice that
it only needed a single digital channel…using the prototype CODECs
and laboratory environments.) The network I was talking with said
their pilot will likely be an affiliate who has unused spectrum or
who multicasts some additional channels who would be willing to
interrupt that for the test period. To that end, I saw an LG TV set
at the show with the first ATSC 3.0 chipset included. I read
through the press briefings a bit and it looks like all major
manufacturers announced either future models or lines with ATSC 3.0
4K. HDR displays were
everywhere. “Ultra HD Premium” was being promoted - as well as HDR
branding - which includes HDR, WCG and other requirements for
improved black levels and luminance. I asked Sony, Samsung and
others about when we could see HDR for HD TVs, and as I expected,
they seemed reluctant to talk about it, with one telling me it
might hurt 4K sales. One manufacturer said it could cost between
25%-50% for “true HDR” on an UltraHD set. I asked what that meant,
and he said that it really required the correct display, software
and enough on-board CPU. To that end, he said some “lower tier”
brands would say they offer HDR, but to look at their displays
beside a top-tier manufacturer and there would be a big difference.
I guess one test is to look at the new Vizio 50” 4K TV with HDR and
As much will be lost as made
There are a lot of big – and
costly – bets being made on the future path and as some are against
one another, they cannot possibly all succeed. I saw multiple DRM
systems being advertised. While some use the same encryption
standard, they are incompatible with each other, as things like key
distribution infrastructures are sold as a whole system. One
prediction I heard from an architect at a major encoding vendor was
that “Netflix was the next MySpace.” Think about that for a moment:
when is the last time you used MySpace? I asked for more and he
said to compare what happened to HD-DVD. He said it was the better
format, was cheaper to produce media, but when Sony flexed its
muscle on content, it lost. So, he said, if one or more studios
either raise prices on content to Netflix or deny it altogether in
favor of any company, Netflix can get starved out.
Private Copy cDVR cannot stand
Private copy – having your own
copy of a recorded show stored in the cloud - gets very expensive
very fast. In Europe, shared copy is widely used. It allows a
single copy to be recorded, with pointers to each customer who
indicated the desire to “record” that content. You can cache shared
copy. The technology to splice ads into playback of a DVR recording
is already here, so a provider could either restore the original
ads, insert new ones or do a hybrid per market, per customer. Now
it’s a matter of the carriers/MSOs to stand up as a group and say
they cannot afford to install exabytes of storage in support of
private copy, as the US content owners are against shared copy
generally. Ericsson estimates that each 100,000 customers using
Cloud DVR require about 33 Petabytes of storage.
Line between TVs and Projectors continues to
I watched Leyard’s 31’ wide 8K
TV and wanted to take it home. It was made of 64 panels,
meticulously assembled. Not to be outdone, a new generation of
short throw projectors is out, which allows them to be 2’ from the
front of the screen and still do a 100” image. Also rear-projection
versions of them exist. Epson has said they hope to get this down
to 1’, which is getting close to putting a projector inside a
closet or small recess behind the screen, rather than 5-8’
3D still a novelty, sort of
One manufacturer was showing a
50” 3D no glasses TV. If you sat just right, 2 rows of 3 folks in
the demo, it did look pretty good. If you did not, it looked
distorted and made me dizzy. There has been at least one of these
at every CES for the last few years, and while there’s a lot of
consumer interest, going beyond the prototype has been the
challenge. Sharp also showed a model, but didn’t give many details
on price or availability. Since their business has essentially been
sold, it’s unclear what the future of R&D is on items like
I also looked at the Nokia Ozo
demo, which is a 360 degree camera (16 cameras on a sphere)
designed to pair with VR goggles. I looked through a pair of Oculus
Rift and was able to watch the live concert being held outside and
noticed the soundstage moved around as I turned my head. The camera
has a pretty high bitrate, so likely a high bandwidth satellite
application, or it will light up the fiber to your home.
higher-resolution movie where I went 40km up in a weather balloon
with full 360 degree view and it was outstanding. For gaming and
special events I could see wearing the goggles is compelling. For
continual TV viewing, I think the “no glasses” TV is the only
option, but they have to fix the viewing angle and price
When you try to take into
account where bitrates are going, it is very much like a seesaw.
Sony had this gorgeous display of compressed 4K sources being
played. They said this was 4K with HDR at under 10 Mb/s using HEVC
encoding. When I asked, they admitted this was multi-pass
processed, and yes, this was not suitable for live TV. I further
asked about what HDR was doing, and their answer was “well, if the
source material gets bigger, then the output will too.” To
which I asked if the improvements in HEVC were offset by the HDR
movement and they simply smiled at me. If 4K VOD goes there, it
would be a big improvement for that, at least.
Commercial tests start in Japan
on August 1 with the Olympics, with NHK expecting full deployment
by 2018. NHK was showing a prototype camera, TV and projector.
Besides the Leyard uber-tron, I spent some time looking at the 85”
NHK OLED protype with a live feed and it looked pretty darn good. I
pressed for a price target, but got nothing in return, except that
it could be “millions of yen.” If it follows some of the early OLED
and 4K, I predict a $100K entry price. I also sat through an 8K
recording of a symphony with the NHK 8K projector, using 22.2
channel sound. While it was not the most dynamic content, the audio
was good and 15’ from the screen, we could see the conductor’s
individual hair and scratches in the wood stands.
Ikegami, not to be outdone, was
showing both an 8K handheld and an 8K studio camera they said was
in production. Canon showed 2 8K prototype studio cameras. This was
my one disappointment with Canon: their 8K demo content was
disappointing, not looking much better than 4K demos they
For the US market, it looks like
8K will appear in large venues and in digital theaters. Sony said
they were working on 8K cinema systems with theaters now, and they
believed this would become the new standard within 18 months for
new installs and upgrades. With commercial large-venue 4K
projectors starting around $125K today, this will not come cheap.
NHK also had a demo 8K streaming and believes they can get it down
to 33 Mb/s by commercial launch.
Drones were also in the house.
In fact, they were a good part of an entire pavilion. Also, there
were some spread throughout the main venues. These went from the
smaller, entry-level products to big ones that looked like they
belonged to SkyNet. I asked about the price on one of the bigger
ones – 6’ across, 8 rotors and a full-on commercial 4K camera
cradled by it. The response I got was that it was “price upon
request.” I said, “OK, I’m requesting the price.” The guy rolled
his eyes at me and said $26,000 plus shipping. I asked further why
26K, and he pointed and said, “See that camera and lens? That’s
$150K and 11 pounds sitting there, and we don’t want our drone to
drop it or crash. We hand assemble and test each component,
including making sure that this will autobalance if one of the
rotors fails.” OK, a $26,000 for a $150,000 camera – I guess I get
There was also this crazy
off-road vehicle with caterpillar treads and a 360 degree arm with
a camera mount. I asked what this beast cost, and the answer was,
“up to $325,000, if you want the armored version.” OK, an armored
version. I had to ask. He said, “If you’re out in a place such as
Afghanistan and are filming and this thing comes over the ridge, it
can look like an assault vehicle to the locals. They often shoot
first and ask questions later. We can only protect the camera so
much since it needs a lens opening, but if you lose the vehicle,
you certainly lose the camera.”
A few more manufacturer notes
Black Magic couldn’t be missed,
even if you wanted to. They had large display ads and a good-sized
booth by the doors. Much closer to what I could afford, their 4K
cameras started at $1,300 and they had a number of companion
products, including an SD card replicator they said would “change
4K distribution.” I had to ask: how, exactly. They said this 1RU
unit would create 24 duplicates for 4K, so if you shot a wedding at
4K, you could give the guests an SD card when they left. …Now I’m
not sure about the listeners, but most of my video needs editing,
so I don’t think I’d shoot video and pass it out right away…. I
admired one of their displays of their slightly more expensive
camera as it looked fabulous – but then the guy next to me, who was
professional cinematographer, said, “Look closer at the display –
that’s the Dolby at $40K each. My bad takes look pretty good on
I ended up going last-minute,
and I do wish I had more than 48 hours to prepare. But after sore
feet from walking the massive displays, I also wish I had a bunch
of discretionary money to buy some of the items on display. CES may
be more appropriate for the average end-customer, but the NAB show
sures gives some insight into what is coming and exposes the
production side of film and video. I did get to meet and listen to
some directors, editors and broadcast engineers talk about their
side of the business. 21 years ago, I attended the Western Cable
Show and remember going to the launch party for The History
Channel. The show was all about coax versus satellite, large
systems versus small systems, and who owned which sports content.
Last week, looked very different: it was all about new advances in
digital TV, mobile video, the continued decline of filmed
productions…. I don’t think it will take anything close to 21 more
years to see dramatic changes, and a redefinition of what a
