Ed’s Projects

The National Association of Broadcasters convention officially kicks off Monday and the press releases have already started flowing.  For those not in the know, the big, big media guns are not shown at CES, nay, they are shown at NAB.

While I won’t be attending this year I can imagine that the theme of the show will be split between HD broadcasting, HD-DVD vs BluRay and possibly a couple of startups showing off HD distribution via the web.  In the world of broadcast SD is all but dead and everything is HD (for any larger market at least.)

The item that intrigues me the most is the HD distribution via the web.  As you may know we have dabbled in trying to distribute some h.264 video files online and we’ve hit a few problems.  The bandwidth requirements are huge, and so far there’s no good business model.  I will be watching the NAB show floor closely for some form of a business model that works with HD online.  If we can get great looking content that’s ad sponsored online for consumers to view for free, the entire media world as we know it will change.  HD-DVD and BluRay is all nice, but the formats are dead already… They just don’t know it yet.

As a fun second note, I’ll also be watching for a good HD camera.  So far the Panasonic HVX200 seems to be the best option out there for a sub $10,000 camera, but that could all change Monday.  While Sony’s offerings have mostly been interlaced to this point (unacceptable for any media file that will play on a progressive screen such as a computer monitor) Sony may come through finally with a 1080p camera under $10k.  Maybe JVC will surprise us with a great new offering…  Or maybe we’ll see nothing new.  We won’t know much until tomorrow.

The final item I’m looking to see is the CinePorter in a beta form, or at least in a somewhat real state.  The HVX200 HD camera is great, but the only way to record HD from the camera is on P2 cards or hard drives.  The Focus Enhancements FS-100 hard drive recorder for the HVX200 just started shipping, but the drive is pretty locked down.  The CinePorter has hot-swappable drives, but I have yet to hear of anyone that has seen a working unit.  The CinePorter has a better potential if it’s real, so I look on eagerly.  A CinePorter combines with an HVX200 camera is a very powerful solution.

I’ll watch the show from the sidelines and report any great product we see.  If you’re at NAB this year I would love to hear from you.  Post your hot list items in the comments.