The NAB show is the world's biggest annual convention covering filmed entertainment and the development, management and delivery of content across all mediums.
The organizers claim this year’s NAB was the largest ever with over 100,000 attendees from 164 countries viewing 1,614 exhibits that spanned over a million square feet of exhibit space. Following are highlights of the show:
Here, There, Everywhere – Ultra HD
While Ultra HD was everywhere at NAB, Harmonic raised the bar in joining with SES®, Sony® and others to deliver three days of live and linear Ultra HD broadcasts over a cable system via a full end-to-end 4K Ultra HD transmission system. The demo showed the advantages of live all-IP in broadcast-quality mode – no more spinning disks while you wait for content to stream. SES set up an Ultra HD studio outside the Las Vegas Convention Center to capture live content. The demo used SES satellites and teleports with a team of technology partners.
Harmonic products in the demo included the Electra™ X3 advanced media processor for live, full-frame, full-GOP UHD (HEVC Main 10 profile) encoding, ProView™ integrated receiver-decoders for satellite reception, ProMedia Xpress high-performance transcoder managed by the Harmonic WFS file-based workflow system for the creation of the HEVC streams, ProMedia™ Package multiscreen stream packager for MPEG-DASH packaging, and NSG Exo distributed CCAP system for DOCSIS transmission. For more details, read the SES press release.
Turning Up the Heat – Spectrum X and Virtual Media API
Announced at our pre-show press conference, Spectrum™ X advanced media server system was a hot topic. This next-gen media server leverages VOS™ technologies and combines file, baseband and transport stream ingest with comprehensive integrated channel playout (ICP) capabilities. Spectrum X media server reduces the number of discrete devices required to produce and distribute branded programming; it lowers capital expenditures, simplifies workflows and reduces operational costs. For details, read the Spectrum X press release.
Also announced was the Harmonic Virtual Media API (VMA), an open application control interface for broadcast automation control of its VOS virtualized media processing platform. The VMA, supported by the Electra XVM virtualized media processor and the Electra X family of advanced media processors, has been adopted by service providers and broadcast automation vendors, including Pebble Beach Systems, Dayang Technology Development Inc. and VJU.
This VOS platform ecosystem creates a fully integrated, cloud-based playout, graphics and encoding solution that can be used by video content and service providers to create and deliver live linear channels to any device faster, with a lower TCO and amazing video quality. For details, read the Harmonic VMA press release.
And we won a few awards as well
– Sarah Kavanagh, Sr. Public Relations Manager, Harmonic