I was lucky enough to spend the last few days wandering around (and taking classes at) the 2009 NAB convention in Las Vegas. The convention is a yearly mega-event trade show where the technical side of the broadcasting, video and audio industry comes together to show off their wares and instruct on techniques and tricks.
There's nothing especially political about this diary, but I thought it would interest people.
The convention is massive, taking up over a million square feet of floor space with hundreds of companies from around the world represented. Highlights of weirdness-
• A Segway mounted steadicam and attached HD video camera.
• A company claiming to sell "Professional iPod Cables." They were bulky and ugly.
• An entire news helicopter on the convention floor.
• Companies selling bandwidth space on their satellites.
• Pieces of radio antenna mast to show materials quality.
• A special meet and greet party in a Beatles-themed bar which, for some reason, featured a Prince impersonator.
And coolness-
• Two words: 3-D HDTV. Holy shit.
• HDTV displays 10 or more feet high displaying crystal clarity.
• HD cameras which were able to clearly capture tiny single-thread strand maze-like patterns on an oriental rug from 20 feet away.
• Real-time motion capture animation from Jim Henson's creature shop- a woman in a special suit was able to make a cartoon character come to life in real time!
• Photo-realistic bluescreened backgrounds which made a group of women sitting at a table look like they were in an actual newsroom. You could not tell that they were not really there at all. We are now able to make totally CG sets in real time which look indistinguishable from the real thing. Sort of scary if you think about it.
• Adobe announcing it is releasing technology to make Flash players which connect to your TV which will allow you to watch YouTube, Hulu, etc. videos and play Flash games directly on your TV.
There was much more coolness which would only be of interest to people who are actually industry pros, so I won't go on at length about those.
This was the first national NAB convention I have been to and there seemed to be a lot of people, but the buzz was that the attendance was down by 50% this year. Apparently, companies were also giving away fewer freebies trying to save money. Both are due to the sagging economy.