Our man on the spot, Shirish Nadkarni, provides a sneak preview of the mind-boggling technological innovations in the field of broadcasting at the centennial edition of the world’s largest broadcast exhibition, NAB 2023.
After a lengthy hiatus owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world’s largest and arguably most prestigious broadcast exhibition-cum-conference, NAB (National Association of Broadcasters), is back at the massive Las Vegas Convention Centre (LVCC), showcasing a slew of mind-boggling technological innovations in the field of broadcasting by over 1,200 exhibitors, over five days between April 15 and 19, 2023.
While there are as many as 140 first-time exhibitors, the number of visitors, with registrations pouring in from over 160 countries, is expected to cross the six-figure mark. They will walk across 575,000 square feet of exhibitor space, covering five massive halls at the spanking-new LVCC, which was constructed by knocking down the Riviera Hotel, and adds a vast amount of additional space to the edifice familiar to old-timers, some of whom have been attending the event for over a quarter of a century.
The sprawling Show Floor has been organised into four distinct destinations:
- Create – where content finds form, where you can explore the latest tools and advanced workflows elevating the art of storytelling.
- Connect – where content moves next
- Capitalise – where content meets commerce
- Intelligent Content – where content gets personal
Worthy of being checked out will be the OTT (Over The Top) demo area for more than 50 streaming video platforms and devices. Also take a peek at the display for global edge-of-the-art media technologies from government, academic, and commercial R&D communities.
Virtual and Cloud outflows are dominating the latest production trends, with exhibitors at the centennial NAB Show showcasing new technology to advance remote production. Broadcasters and the cable industry – among them, Comcast NBC Universal, Sinclair and Pearl TV -- will be demonstrating NextGen TV’s enhanced audio accessibility features.
One can monitor broadcast, OTT, HLS, VOD and FAST streams, with comprehensive compliance monitoring and logging solutions that include an extensive set of multiviewers, verification of SCTE and HLS ad triggers, tools for newsroom and ad sales workflows, and much more.
Also exciting in the field of cloud production and playout is the handshake between Imagine Partners and Norwegian industry leader Vizrt (see lead story on sportscasting, elsewhere in this issue) to deliver live linear solutions in the public Cloud. Innovations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) indexing technology are transforming content monetisation by empowering media companies to examine petabytes of content in milliseconds, thus improving content monetisation.
Among the breaking news at this epochal event is the launch of a fully managed IPTV service in the US, offered as SaaS (Software as a Service), with a faster time to market for over 200 US national and regional channels being available, with a single contract to cover all channels.
With the final finishing touches to the exhibits having been put on the make-up day, (Saturday, April 15), the stage is set for television and radio broadcasters, broadcast equipment manufacturers, system integrators, and all stake-holders in the field of broadcasting to demonstrate, and for visitors and delegates to soak in, the latest trends and technologies driving the future of media and entertainment.