Las Vegas is hurting. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas but nothing happens if people don't come here. Attendance for the trade show I am attending was reported to be down 20% but it seems lighter than that to me. Restaurants and bars in my hotel remained closed even though this week the hotel is full. Nobody complains about the economy but the distress among the cab drivers and servers is palpable.
NAB is The National Association of Broadcasters and I'm attending their trade show this week. Manufacturers of equipment for TV, radio, and internet broadcasting demo new products. I spent most of the last two days listening to presentations from Adobe, Autodesk, and Sony.
I took a few pictures inside the dimly lit conference rooms but I'll save you the bandwidth. This is slightly more interesting but a little hard to explain ...
It is a demonstration of the NHK "Super Hi-Vision" camera system. A camera is on Las Vegas Blvd and transmitting a live image via fiber optic cable. (1 gig/sec data rate) In a theater, where photography was not allowed, the entire 7680x4320 pixel image was projected using a projector that was also developed by NHK. Most people reading this blog have never seen resolution higher than 1080i. Each quadrant of this display is twice that resolution at 1080p. So ... 4 times 2 is 8 times the resolution most Americans have ever seen and this image represents only half of the signal.
Another cool NHK exhibit that I couldn't photograph was a rudimentary 3-D system that doesn't require glasses to view. By the time my 14 year old nephew Mitchell talks me into taking him to this show, it will be a viable product.
NHK is a publicly financed Japanese TV network that also runs a consortium made up of private companies that develop technology. Why haven't I ever shot anything on an American TV camera ? I think RCA invented TV broadcasting. Didn't they ? The U.S. could never let that happen again ... could we ?
Today I'm attending this event
Then an overnight flight home and back out on the road Friday. Thanks for all the emails. Next post will be sometime next week. M.
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