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NAB Show 2014 Recap
Coming up on a month out and I have not even done a recap of the NAB Show! Well, that’s because most of the wanderings I did had to do with actual business this year. Odd, but true. I really could have used a third day this year as I did not even make it to the South Hall!!! Nor did I visit my friends at GoPro or DJi. Now that is what I call busy.
What I did see was the cool stuff that you probably already know about through trades or hearsay. I like the new Nautel GV series transmitters. Harris is also looking good and stepping up a bit. This time I was actually talking STL equipment with them. The Alliance had their share of stuff, and all they need to do now is make transmitters since they seem to do everything else. As you can tell if you have read this far, nothing really jumped out at me at this point. I did have a nice demonstration of the Tieline offering: the Codec Lounge. A very good concept and we discussed possible ways of making it even better. Maybe I’ll get a demo/beta version to try out. I also heard about the SAS Virtual Console of which I will get to see shortly. I have some ideas for this.
Of course on the Radio side of life is talk of HD Radio. HD this, HD that. As we progress with this technology I see more and more use of it as a data transport more so than audio. Traffic, weather, album art, artist and title. Wonder what else we can squeeze into 96kb, or 128kB? Did I get to see any demos? No. I saw a couple of cars out front, though. The one thing that stood out to me is that different manufacturers are offering different radios that do different things. My new Mazda6 has HD, but it does not do album art; it does everything else. A hand full of aftermarket have displays for everything, but there are many that do not. Will there ever be a “standard?”
Along the lines of STL’s (that’s Studio to Transmitter Links for the acronym challenged) I’m seeing more in the IP transport arena. We are actually researching upgrading our aural STLs to an IP based system for two reasons, flexibility and flexibility. Audio over IP on a private network is just fine these days and for a backup to anything else it is great. With all the data we push around with IP based remote controls and addressable transmitter equipment, the added flexibility of IP makes life much more simple. For audio I was looking a the Tieline and Worldcast gear. As for a system we are looking into the licensed 8, 11, etc. Gig radios and broadband data. Let’s see how that pans out over the year.
As we move forward what did you see that excited you at the show? Overall, not too much jumped out at me. Yet, on the face-to-face time, it was a very good show. Maybe next year I can get an extra day to see the other world of cool stuff in the South Hall.
Why We Like Tieline
In a nutshell: Because they work. In the last week we had one day, last Sunday, three live broadcasts or some feed via Tieline. One was our weekly show utilizing a POTS connection, one was an extended broadcast utilizing IP through a resort, and one was feeds from a concert utilizing IP via Verizon 4G modem. Meanwhile a fourth unit was in Mexico ready for a week of morning show broadcasts utilizing IP. Needless to say everything worked just fine with minimal issues.
If that was not enough, we helped a fellow broadcaster stay on the air while tower work occurred at their site. We provided our Aux site for use and we used a Tieline to provide audio from their studios to ours via IP. Once again, all worked just fine.
If you have not noticed, and you have read the trades, audio delivery via IP is our number one choice. We prepared for and accepted the Internet as a viable option, even international. Latency has not been an issue. Quality is quite acceptable and actually superior. The one caveat is the occasional data hit. This is kept to a minimum with the right combination of data rate and error correction. Of the worst offenders was the resort hotel right in our backyard. Our experience is they have minimal bandwidth shared with many guests. The kicker is the broadcast from Cabo had less errors than the local resort!
The ease of use and the flexibility of the Tielines keep us on top of our live broadcasts. We are sticklers on quality. We like to tinker with the latest (4G). We are successful because of it. Our oldest Tieline iMix-3G is coming up to at least 5 or 6 years old now. We work them hard, and we will be working them harder.
Tech Notes from the Field 