There is some 3D on display in the South Upper Hall — Monogram Multimedia is showing its 3DLive portable 3D production switcher, mounted in a flypack case — but the bulk of the exhibits seem to be focused on various aspects of mobility and what the NAB Show once called “convergence.”
For example, the Destination Broadband Pavilion has 15 or more exhibitors showing technology for handling video on the Internet. Solutions might involve using the Internet to collect news clips, controlling access to Web-based video or simply ingesting analog video and converting it to digital. After all, there are still huge libraries of analog video in public and private hands.
One of the Destination Broadband companies is VeriCorder Technology, which makes video-related iPhone applications. One of its products, 1st Video, can be used to edit video and audio on an iPhone. From that point, it’s a 3G hop, skip and a jump to the Internet, where the video can be shipped or loaded to wherever it’s needed.
Demonstrating 1st Video, Alison Yesilcimen of VeriCorder used her texting skills to show the product to a potential customer.
“I can record onto the track, so now that’s right there,” she said, doing a quick audio overlay.
A colleague in the VeriCorder booth explained that 1st Video is currently capable of 480p, but 720p is expected to be accommodated in the next generation of iPhone.
Another form of mobility was getting a lot of attention in the South Upper Hall.
News organizations have long had mobile trucks with microwave to get live stories back from distant locations, but the growth of wireless broadband has created another path to get video to the studio from the field. Several companies are showing devices that use 3G and 4G broadband services for remote news feeds, all of them slightly different and quite interesting.
Nomad Innovations is showing LiveEdge V2.0, which uses 4G wireless broadband to get SD or HD video from the field back to the studio. The camera-mounted box allows the cameraman to adjust the data rate to accommodate the necessary video quality. LiveEdge is now on the air at TV stations in Portland, Ore., and here in Las Vegas.
Another ENG mobility approach is on display at the Signal 3G Eng booth, where the company’s backpack-mounted wireless broadband interface uses up to nine 3G modems simultaneously to handle high-quality video.
LiveU uses a similar approach. The company uses three 3G modems from three different cellular providers (AT&T, Sprint and Verizon) to get a reliable high-bandwidth path for mobile video.
Attendees were swarming these and other booths that showed similar products, and there were lots of different takes on the technologies. Julian Wells from Reuters in the United Kingdom was carefully considering what would work best for his needs.
“We go from country to country and can use wireless networks everywhere,” he said. “We can’t get tied into a system that requires we use certain providers and pay bonding fees.”