September 1, 2008

Editor's Letter: Beyond HDTV?

By Jonathan Tombes

Funny how high definition television (HDTV) has shed its early adopter buzz and slipped into the mainstream.

OK, maybe not so funny for those of you still scrambling to satisfy this growing (i.e., increasingly mainstream) demand for HDTV. And fair enough, some hype endures.

DISH Network's announcement - shortly before a disappointing earnings call - that positioned itself as the first mover in the 1080 progressive (p) format is a case in point. Leave aside the question of 24 vs. 60 frames per second. That was a lot of PR for a single movie (Warner Bros. "I Am Legend.")

Beijing games

But that's the kind of exception that helps establish this trend. Consider the Olympics.

Broadcasters covering the Beijing athletic fest naturally used HD cameras. The techno-buzz surrounding this intense event, however, seemed rather to emanate from making video available to PCs, laptops and smart phones.

A targeted search of my inbox identified three vendors (Envivio, Adobe and Digital Rapids) touting their work with CCTV.com, the new media service platform of China Central Television (CCTV). The infrastructure from Cisco Systems that helped NBC Universal route thousands of hours from location to editors and then to multiple distribution networks is another example.

Media production and publishing company Anystream - whose team we got to know at last year's Cable Show - was an important partner in NBCU's handling the complicated workflows involving multiple thousands of titles destined for multiple types of display devices.

This and more turned the Beijing games into a kind of preview of the September IBC show in Amsterdam, where 'three-screen' technologies likely will generate continued interest from those tracking the intersection of technology and consumer demand.

Jonathan Tombes
Editor