Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Las Vegas Diary # 1 of 1
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 15:24:33 -0400
As some of you know I have been in Las Vegas attending the NAB 2000 conference (National Association of Broadcasters). There were 130,000 people there and most of them spent the whole time. LV is a zoo when that many people get in town. Taxi lines were long long long and the busses from one show site to the other were also had very long lines. I gave the keynote at the NAB technical luncheon and have been told it was live webcasted and will also be on the NAB site in a few weeks. It was very well received but the highlight of the speech was when I invited the largely technical audience to come down to the FCC and tell us what they are doing and how we can help. I suggested they come without their lawyers in tow and got a rousing applause. The show was billed as showing convergence , I assume between cyberspace and the broadcast industry. I saw lots and lots of devices -- endless cables, cameras, audio control systems , program control systems, etc etc etc and very few convergent integrated products. The attitude (not unanimous) was that the broadcasters controlled the program content and thus had a great future. -- very debatable. They have a future but what the form of that future is is yet to be determined. The interesting things at the show were the large number of HDTV cameras, displays (flat panel) etc. It was however difficult for me to tell the difference between DTV and HDTV. Both had artifacts due to both on the displays available and the technology used .but I would love to have either. The other interesting item was the Geocast system. (http://www.geocast.com). Geocast uses a data channel in the digital broadcast signals, from up to 4 stations, to send to a unit attachable to a PC news, live feeds etc with the stations quarantining about an average of 2 megabits/sec on average. The programtic material is fed to the local stations via satellite with a capability of the insertion of local adds , news etc. Anyway they had a unit set up and it worked well. They are broadcasting in the San Jose area but unfortunately not in DC. The staff seems to be ex- valley folk from the former netscape etc and appeared to be very good. Keep your eyes on them. The aim is to make the service free -- station commercials supported and have the subscriber purchase the interface unit in the $300 range (about $100 claimed subsidization ). Dave PS: I promised I would not issue disclaimers but just wish to remind everyone that my IP mailings etc ONLY represent my views and tastes NOT the FCC, UPenn or anyone except myself and sometimes not even myself.
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