The week after my trip to San Diego, I flew west again. Once in Las Vegas, I checked in to Circus Circus. Cheap and within walking distance of the Convention Center. And not without some aging charm. From my window, I had a good view of the dome that caps the hotel’s amusement park.

A few days is long enough to take the pulse of an industry. It was also enough time to catch up with clients, both my own and those I serve through a partner firm, Xpresso Communications.  As for big themes at NAB 2017, no surprises. I sensed momentum and uncertainty over UHD, more urgent adoption of IP technologies and greater interest in cloud-based workflows.

UHD Doubts and Promise

A video-intensive show, NAB 2017 afforded a lot of space to Ultra (U)HD. Standards are in flux, but the ecosystem is gaining strength. A headline in the Show Daily used the word “bullish.” In that article, Jeff Baumgartner cited CTA research indicating that sales of 4k UHD TVs are outpacing HDTVs in comparable periods. Yet do consumers know what they’re getting? Or getting what they want? What makes a bigger difference than 4k resolution is the contrast enabled by high-definition resolution (HDR). Yet with a handful of HDR formats in play, there is uncertainty over when industry-standard, next-generation HD will take off.

And yet video continues to improve. At the NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) booth in the Futures Park, I had my own “moment” at the Super-Hi Vision (8k) Theatre. The video of Seiji Ozawa conducting a symphony orchestra on this 350-inch screen was so lifelike that it tricked me. The flutes caught my eye. (I have a few.) I took a step forward, aiming to check out the manufacturer. The video resolution was not, in fact, that high. But the thought that I might be able to see that level of detail is revealing. It reminds me of the Cisco Telepresence system launch a decade ago, when participants found themselves reaching out to shake hands with counterparts on the opposite screen.

IP Transition and Workflows

The IP Showcase on the floor of the North Hall maintained a steady schedule of sessions and demos. Organized by the IABM and eight other industry organizations, this mini conference within a show focused on the use of IP technologies inside broadcast facilities and beyond their reach into the wide area network (WAN). Pushing the broadcast industry toward this common framework is SMPTE 2110, a nearly ratified, IP-rich standard with which dozens of vendors are eager to interoperate. Networking and software companies engaged in OTT video are also fueling the IP transition. Those that delivered last summer’s Olympic games in Rio claim special bragging rights.

Workflows were a related buzzword at this year’s NAB. It’s not a new word. There are already well-established industry templates for processing and managing media of all types. What’s different is the role of IP, the power of cloud computing and the rise of cloud-native applications. The outcome is software-based automation that mirrors network functions virtualization (NFV) trends within the telecom arena. Describing the release of source code for its micro-services platform, Imagine Communications Chief Product Officer Brick Eksten said that the initiative was a turning point. “This is how Google and Netflix and Facebook run their networks,” he said, in a Show Daily article reported by Mark Hallinger. “We saw the future, and we invested in this framework.”

Time to Leave

On top of UHD, IP and workflows, there was plenty of other technology on display. Virtualized set display demos (on-air ‘talent’ talking before virtual backdrops) seemed very popular. More interesting to me were the infrastructure players involved in CDNs, compute and storage, testing and measurement, etc. Finally, the bell rang, the floor closed and NAB 2017 came to an end.

Afterward, I joined Hallinger, a former colleague, for a taxi and then a walk down the Strip. We had a late lunch at Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville. (But kept it “between the navigational beacons,” as Buffet says on that Alan Jackson song.) Then I took the monorail back to the convention center, walked across the hot parking lot and collected my bag from Circus Circus. It was the first time I’d been in the main casino at that time of day. There were trapeze artists swinging above me as I left the hotel. I’d never seen them before. There’s always something new in Las Vegas, even if it’s old.