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NAB 2006

Jun 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Barry Braverman, S. D. Katz, D. W. Leitner, Steve Mullen, Dan Ochiva, Jan Ozer, and Jeff Sauer

Perspectives from the show floor

           

Sony XDCAM HD PDW-F350

When the final history of NAB 2006 is written, don't be surprised if it ends up sounding like the tale of the blind man and the elephant: Depending upon which part you grab, you'll likely come up with a different view of the whole thing.

For some, it will be camcorders, camcorders, camcorders. And why not? Canon, JVC, Grass Valley, Hitachi, Ikegami, Panasonic, and Sony all had significant new products debut. That's not even including the entire show floor buzz that next-gen systems from Red and Silicon Imaging garnered. (See D.W. Leitner's blogs from the show at blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/nab and see page 10 of this issue for more on these controversial offerings.)

But anyone interested in postproduction didn't go away disappointed either. Avid surprised many with a burgeoning list of products — from a software-only Media Composer to the Avid Interplay's soup-to-nuts infrastructure — which demonstrated an aggressive pursuit of the high ground in post and broadcasting. Although Apple didn't throw a press conference, its new Intel-powered MacBook Pro and Boot Camp software drew kudos.

Meanwhile, for the first time, a whole new networked world of telcos, wireless and IPTV companies, and manufacturers of streaming gear and codec cards made it clear that it really might be time to change “broadcasters” to “bitcasters” in the NAB acronym.