It was all there: the hushed murmur of the crowd, the unspoken anticipation, guards anxiously awaiting their cue to admit the faithful.
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Harris kept the spirit of North Hall alive by bringing along some transmitters.
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I’ve witnessed this scene many times in my three decades or so of NAB Shows, but it never grows old. It’s something like opening night on Broadway.
However, once the guards waved me inside the North Hall, things there were anything but familiar. In times past, North Hall was the domain of gear for the radio crowds — big transmitters, antennas, audio consoles, automation packages and the like.
No more; North has all but given way to the video side of things. (Yes, I did see some transmitters — the place would probably be jinxed if there weren’t some kind of RF emitter around — but these were in the flagship Harris booth and constituted only a very small part what mega-supplier Harris brought to the show.)
Once I accepted the reality that former North Hall stalwarts were elsewhere, I did a fast walkabout to get some of the flavor of what would be waiting for me when I did begin to zoom in on individual booths.
Could I sum up my overall impressions in one word? Yes: 3D!
What caught my eye were the piles and stacks of 3D viewing glasses at many of the booths.
Last year’s NAB Show was memorable for being the last one before the demise of analog television broadcasting. I have a very strong feeling that this year’s event will be remembered as “the year 3D arrived.”
I haven’t seen so many of the red/cyan, left-eye/right-eye glasses since my 1950s childhood and the movie theater and 3D comic book offerings churned out back then to capitalize on the 3D cinema craze.
My first stop was at the Axon booth — and yep, a pile of 3D glasses awaited me.
Houston Harding, Axon’s director of U.S. sales, and Adrian Smith, the company’s senior sales engineer, were quick to demo a new product that makes a lot of sense in the production of 3D content. Axon’s G3D100 is a 3 Gbps SD/HD low-latency stereoscopic and transmission tool. (Try saying that three times fast.)
The unit provides two types of 3D outputs: the good old anaglyph I grew up with and a feed for today’s high-tech active shutter glasses.
“The anaglyph display is good for a quick check of 3D video by truck technicians using inexpensive glasses,” said Harding. “The other output provides a high-quality look at the transmitted 3D using the much more expensive shuttered glasses. Each has its place in production.”
In fairness, there were new things to see that weren’t 3D-related; I’ll be reporting on these tomorrow.