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“Whether we like it or not, we’re a proving ground for the masses.”
– Dave Pedigo, CEDIA Senior Director of Learning and Emerging Technologies

Virtual golf booth at 2013

One of four virtual golf products I saw at CEDIA Expo 2013

At first glance, the CEDIA Expo, held in Denver last week, might not look all that relevant to those of us who are more interested in finding new ways to watch TV than in where to buy rows of theater seats. Pedigo, speaking at a panel discussion sponsored by Dish Network, summed up the counterargument in that sentence. Today’s 4K video upconverters are tomorrow’s $40 Walmart DVD players. Okay, maybe day after tomorrow.

CEDIA stands for the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association. These are the people who assemble and install wonderful entertainment goodies in the houses and mansions of clients who can afford the very best. They’re the type of folks who think that a $4000 Kaleidescape movie server would be a good fit for their home theater project. As a rep at the Dish booth told me, “This is not our typical customer.”

Pedigo’s statement also contained another truth – today’s new tech standard might be tomorrow’s Betamax. Already buzzards are circling around 3D TV, the tech darling of 2010. (I think that 3D will come back strong once it works out glasses-free, big-screen displays, but it’s not here yet.) Standards and technologies that are only recently available will be what we live with 10 or 20 years from now.

“Good design is about removing complexity from users’ lives.”
– Zean Nielsen, President of Bang & Olufsen America

Bang & Olufsen announced at its CEDIA press conference that it will be the first to launch a product certified by the Wireless Speaker & Audio (WiSA) Association. According to the WiSA site, it’s “an industry group dedicated to promoting the adoption of WiSA-compliant wireless audio technology.” That should give you a good hint about the nature of that product, for which I’m under an NDA until October 30.

I mention that announcement as another good example of what’s going on here. Companies line up behind different standards, and some of those standards are destined to be ubiquitous in a few years. Sure the prices are not those experienced by the median Dish customer. (A Sound & Vision magazine distributed at CEDIA Expo raved about the “crazy-affordable” Fluance XL7F speaker system, available at the “unbelievably low price” of $800.) But their wave of influence will reach that average Joe eventually.

“Convenience is Number One for consumers. Give them the best product so they won’t look elsewhere.”
– Vivek Khemka, Dish Senior Vice President of Product Management

SonyBlurWhat more can I tell you? Here are more of my notes:

  • More than 470 exhibitors and 17,900 attendees from 84 countries attended CEDIA Expo this year. That’s about an eighth of the International CES’s numbers from January. In almost every way, CEDIA Expo resembled a scaled-down CES, except that its training sessions seemed a lot more down to earth. Teaching real installers how to work with different technologies is useful no matter where you are.
  • Sony held its press conference in its 4K demonstration theater on the CEDIA Expo exhibit hall floor just as the show opened. Around 35 guys crowded into a black room designed to seat 20. As the Sony reps began to show off their newest and most dazzling products, the convention’s announcer’s voice boomed around us that CEDIA 2013 was underway. Even as the screen in the dark room showed the amazing glitter of the Carnaval in Rio (captured to the best of my iPhone’s ability here), we heard the swarms of conventioneers passing within a few feet of its walls. It felt as though we were taking cover from a hurricane in a packed storm shelter.
  • Dish Network opened the APIs for its Hopper, and that effort began to pay off as it announced its upcoming integration with Control4, one of the leading home automation and control companies. Dish promised that it will be working with more partners soon. As a Dish shareholder, I’m glad to see it go after this high-end market.
  • Only one exhibitor even mentioned over-the-air TV. Veteran satellite and OTA antenna manufacturer Winegard had a small booth to promote its new FlatWave AIR outdoor amplified antenna. On the other hand, TiVo was promoting its Roamio line of DVRs. Unlike the TiVo models that I fell in love with a decade ago, the Roamios have no OTA inputs.
  • On a related note, Bruce Leichtman of Leichtman Research Group pointed out that those early TiVo models, which were so influential and game-changing when they were introduced, never reached more than 2 percent of TV households, while today over half of households use a DVR. The lesson there is “consumers like it better when it’s incorporated in their receiver.” Personally, I can just imagine the sea change once a serious over-the-top service gets integrated with a standard pay-TV receiver. Dish Anywhere and Roku are closing in on this idea from different directions. Who will be the first provider to include include dozens of OTT-delivered channels in its receiver’s live TV guide?

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Hopper mascot at Dish Network's CEDIA booth

Hopper mascot at Dish Network’s CEDIA booth

“What nimbleTV is doing, Dish regards as illegal.” That’s what a press relations contact for Dish told me this afternoon immediately after consulting with Dish executives at their booth at CEDIA Expo. I had asked Dave Arland about the nature of Dish’s relationship with nimbleTV, prompting him to withdraw to a lengthy discussion before returning with that short answer.

When I pointed out that Dish had already shut down nimbleTV once and asked why Dish didn’t simply continue cutting off its service, Arland replied, “It’s not that simple.” He said that nimbleTV had “workarounds” and declined to elaborate further.

That description of nimbleTV contradicts its often-stated goal of keeping its programmers fully paid and therefore happy. I’ve reached out to nimbleTV for a reaction to today’s Dish comment, but at the time of this post, I haven’t received a reply.

Clearly something happened in the weeks between Dish cutting off nimbleTV and the resumption of nimbleTV’s Dish-based packages. I had theorized that Dish required certain changes that nimbleTV implemented in the interim – local channels restricted to in-market subscribers, and fewer simultaneous recordings. There was one other change that I hadn’t mentioned, one that Dish would be unlikely to request. In my bottom-tier package, drawing from channels in Dish’s Welcome Pack, my non-local channels such as Comedy Central and TBS are now in HD. Before the service interruption, nimbleTV had delivered those in SD, matching the quality that direct subscribers to the Welcome Pack would see. If Dish mandated those changes, why allow HD upgrades to Welcome Pack subscribers? If Dish didn’t mandate those other changes, why did nimbleTV make them?

If Dish is right, could it have been that nimbleTV’s programmers somehow created some “workarounds” to continue offering service despite Dish’s desire to cut them off? Is nimbleTV account stacking, running too many receivers on each Dish account and letting too many subscribers view the results? I have a hard time believing that nimbleTV’s slow, careful buildup would culminate in aw-heck-with-it illegal access. NimbleTV could clear the air by simply telling the world how it delivers all those Dish-originated channels to all those streaming customers. In the absence of those facts, I’m confused as usual about nimbleTV. And even now, I sure hope it’s legal.

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RandomSouthHall“Broadcasters haven’t reached a fork in the road; they’ve reached a tangled multi-spoke hub. In one direction is the well-traveled old-school way, over-the-air broadcasting. … But that idea seems to be withering under the intense heat of the Internet.”

That’s just one small part of a long report by Ned Soseman, writing in Broadcast Engineering. Soseman uses the occasion of the NAB Show to summarize the current state of the broadcast industry. “The one point nearly everyone seems to agree on is that NAB isn’t just for broadcasters,” he wrote. Video technology advances apply to everyone because anyone can be a broadcaster, if you count the internet.

From the customers’ perspective, there’s the stuff that’s available for free over the air, and there are the channels we actually watch, and there’s the huge cable/satellite bill that supports them. There’s Senator John McCain’s a la carte bill (going nowhere, by the way) and a cable spokesman’s claim that a la carte wouldn’t lower cable bills. Soseman summarizes the way it all looks today and then sums it up by saying, well, broadcasters need to try something different. It all reads like something I would have written, except that I would have tried for some crazy guess about the future. Anyway, I’m happy that Soseman did the work, and that it gives me an excuse to run one more NAB Show photo. Now go read it!

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Landscape photo of the Las Vegas Convention Center

The Las Vegas Convention Center during the NAB Show. If you look closely, you can see the monorail passing by the North Hall.

For over a week, I’ve been wrestling with the question: What’s it like to visit the NAB Show? Let me try to make the answer manageable by breaking it into four parts: the education sessions, the general sessions, the exhibit floor, and the stuff behind closed doors.

The education sessions, often part of conferences, contain some interesting talks from experts, along with a fair number of sales pitches by folks trying to get you to hire them or start using their products. They’re not free, but some of the topics may be worth it. The best ones to visit are those that are a tight match for what you’re interested in, and they’re even better when they take place during the quieter couple of days before the keynote. Check out the NAB Show conference schedule and pricing to see what’s available.

Weatherman in front of green screen

Virtual sets and green-screened weather services were demonstrated for buyers from TV stations.

The general sessions are free, and unlike the general sessions of some conventions, they’re often worth attending. The keynote, just before the exhibit floor opens, often contains real news. This year, Chase Carey, the president of News Corporation, fired off a warning that Fox could leave over-the-air TV if Aereo continues to prevail in the courts. That’s pretty unlikely, but it sure has started a lot of people talking about it.

If you really want to know what the NAB Show is like, the centerpiece is the exhibit floor. It’s free, and it’s where to find a lot of interesting stuff.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the exhibit floor is populated by companies with something to sell to broadcasters. Or to aspiring filmmakers. Based on what I see here every year, I’m convinced that half the film school graduates in America find themselves working for a TV station news department, and most of them still have a great movie bouncing around in their heads.

A row of small booths at the NAB Show.

A row of small booths at the NAB Show.

The booths tend to cluster by theme. Most of the radio gear was near the front of the Central Hall this year. Production music and stock video were just past the middle stairs in the South Lower Hall. The largest exhibitors stake out the same spot on the floor year after year.

And the booths come in all sizes. There are the behemoths, such as Sony or Harris, that can’t fit into a single photo. There are middle-sized booths, the majority of them, with plenty of room for displays and conferences. And there are the small-sized booths, barely the length of a long folding table with room for just a couple of chairs behind it. Those tiny booths sometimes contain just derivative, cheap products, but sometimes they’re the home of the most interesting new technologies.

Row of satellite equipment

Part of the row of satellite news gathering equipment on display along the green carpet between the South and Central Halls at the NAB Show.

If you’re a satellite fan, this is a much better place to visit than CES. There’s a whole aisle of satellite equipment outdoors, between the South and Central halls. It’s probably not as good as Satellite show held every March in Washington DC, but I haven’t been there yet, so I couldn’t tell you.

And what about the stuff behind closed doors? That’s where the really big deals get made, but with rare exceptions, they never let me in, so I can’t tell you what they’re like. And if you already attend those secret meetings, then you don’t need me to tell you.

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I’m safely back at FTAList / FTABlog World Headquarters in Denver after another interesting, fun time at the NAB Show in Las Vegas. While I re-acclimate to the glorious lack of oxygen up here, I wanted to share with you the most entertaining session I saw this week.

Part of NewTek‘s Broadcast Minds series, the topic was Internet Content Creators Talk What’s Next Online. Never mind the title; I saw that Penn Jillette, one of my favorite author/comedian/magicians, was going to be on the panel along with Tom Green and other fun people. (If Jillette was cheesed that the moderator’s introduction started by mentioning his appearance on Celebrity Apprentice, he didn’t show it.) The video lasts an hour, which went by much too quickly, and it contains a few naughty words if that’s a problem. Enjoy!