Tag Archives: nab2013

NAB 2013 wrap-up: Sony 4K TVs, Red, Blackmagic, Thunderbolt and more!

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The National Association of Broadcasters' annual event in Vegas may not offer the same blitz of high-profile gadgets as CES, but this show is hardly a quiet one. In fact, the excitement kicked off before the floor even opened, with Sony announcing pricing for its 55- and 65-inch 4K TVs. When 25 grand is the norm for these high-end sets, MSRPs of $5,000 and $7,000 seem downright budget-friendly. Blackmagic's $995 Pocket Cinema Camera also made headlines for its value proposition, with a Super-16 Cinema sensor, 13 stops of dynamic range and a Micro Four Thirds lens mount rounding out a very solid spec list.

Our favorite booth, however, belonged to Red. The company was performing its Dragon upgrade on-site, giving showgoers a fascinating look at the process of boosting the sensor to 6K -- we were even able to snag an exclusive look inside the sacred space. Finally, Intel announced the next generation of its Thunderbolt interface, promising double the throughput and expanded 4K support. But those are just the highlights; check out our complete coverage after the break for the full rehash.

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Hands-on with Freefly’s shockingly awesome $15,000 Movi camera gimbal

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DNP Handson with Freefly's shockingly awesome $15,000 Movi camera gimbal

One of the hottest gadgets at NAB isn't quite what you'd expect. Freefly, the company behind a series of professional-grade cinema hexacopters, is demoing its new Movi three-axis stabilized camera gimbal. We heard some rumblings about such a device last week, but the $15,000 price tag is quite a turnoff -- until you see it in action. We dropped by the company's booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center to check it out with an attached Canon EOS-1D C. Movi weighs in at just 3.5 pounds, jumping to 10 pounds once you mount the Canon camera and lens.

It's a very robust system, despite the weight and footprint, letting you pull off shots that otherwise may require hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment, and a substantial crew. In other words, you can capture incredibly compelling motion scenes with just a single camera operator. Don't take our word for it, though -- join us past the break to see Movi in action, along with a glowing testimonial from director Vincent Laforet, who Freefly tapped to shoot the gimbal's very first sample reel.

Gallery: Freefly Movi camera gimbal hands-on

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Source: Vincent Laforet

Akamai demos Hyperconnected Living Room second-screen concept at NAB

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Companion apps are nothing new, but while they can serve up bonus material for a TV show or medal counts for the Olympics, they can't see exactly what you're watching and display relevant information in realtime. Akamai's Hyperconnected Living Room concept demoed here at NAB aims to enhance the dual-screen experience by both pushing out on-demand movies and other streaming content and bringing related info to your slate, exactly when you'd expect to see it.

Akamai says it cooked up this demo especially for NAB "to get people thinking about the possibilities" of a second-screen experience. Those possibilities, if you haven't guessed, generally require you to open up your wallet. When Mission Impossible was playing on the big screen, pricing for a character's sunglasses popped up on the tablet. During a basketball game, we were prompted to buy tickets for an upcoming game. Depending on what you're watching, you may also see trivia from IMDB or links to players' stats.

To connect an iPad to the service, an Akamai rep simply signed into the web-based interface on both the TV and the tablet (though the service is generally compatible with any web-connected device). Once linked, the tablet can function as a remote for pausing and selecting content to stream, and users can personalize what ads and info they receive by providing details such as age, location and even clothing size. If you can't watch Mad Men without wondering where to buy Don Draper's fedora, you'll be all over the video demo below.

Gallery: Akamai Hyperconnected Living second-screen demo

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After hours at NAB: A closer look at Red’s Dragon upgrade operation (video)

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After hours at NAB A closer look at Red's Dragon upgrade operation video

Red's clean room on the NAB show floor is typically no place for camera crews, but after adding a bit of protection, Red President Jarred Land gave us the green light to step inside the company's sacred space for a closer look at operation Dragon upgrade. (The $8,500+ sensor swap gives Epic cams the gift of 6K shooting.) The view from behind the glass wall separating spectators from technicians isn't significantly different, but we were able to get quite a bit more insight into how the process goes down, including stops at each of the workstations.

The temporary assembly center that Red built at the Las Vegas Convention Center is a miniature version of the company's primary facility in Irvine, California -- while Dragon upgrades are underway in Las Vegas, a structure that's estimated to be 20 times the size of the one here in Nevada is processing the updates remotely, though admittedly with far less fanfare. Join us past the break for an exclusive look at the process, live from Red's booth at NAB.

Gallery: Red Dragon upgrade eyes-on

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Sony Anycast Touch live-broadcasting system hands-on (video)

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DNP Sony Anycast Touch livebroadcasting system handson video

The Anycast Touch is not only a sleeker incarnation of Sony's all-in-one studio, with a slider design and a manageable-enough 6.6-kg (13-pound) body; it's also the company's first such system to feature a touchscreen interface. The machine sports two touch-enabled displays, allowing users to adjust audio controls, type via an on-screen keyboard and edit footage, among other functions. Video sources are assigned to one side of the panel, and tapping a particular input will bring up the footage in the middle preview window. It seems like an intuitive interface, especially given all the live-broadcasting controls on board -- a six-input video switcher, a five-channel audio mixer, a built-in character and title generator, and a remote camera controller, just to name a few.

Aside from the touchscreens, built-in live-streaming capability is one of the Anycast Touch's most unique features. On the show floor, Sony was sharing the product's output with WiFi-enabled devices. According to the company, this functionality will be useful in educational settings, at houses of worship, corporate seminars and any other events intended to reach a broad audience. The Anycast could even help news producers scale back on their own gear, letting them trade those gigantic live trucks for live vans or sedans, for example. Pricing info isn't set in stone, but Sony says the MSRP will be less than $20,000 when the device ships at the end of summer. There's simply a ton of functionality here, so we definitely recommend checking out the studio-in-a-box in action in our hands-on video after the break for a bit more detail.

Gallery: Sony Anycast Touch hands-on

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Red details Scarlet upgrades and trade-ins: $9,500 for Full Epic-X or Scarlet Dragon

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Red details Scarlet upgrades and trade-ins: $9,500 for Full Epic-X or Scarlet Dragon

If you're pining for a Dragon Sensor but don't have an Epic-M or Epic-X in your collection, you might be in luck: Red just detailed an upgrade and trade-in path for owners of its entry-level Scarlet camera. By plunking down $9,500 and trading-in your Scarlet, you'll nab a Full Epic-X with its new black body, and have the option upgrade it to a Full Epic Dragon through the standard update process, to boot. If that doesn't strike your fancy, you could send in $9,500 instead and have your grey-bodied cam turned into a Scarlet Dragon, netting you the dynamic range and revamped color of the new sensor, replete with a maximum frame rate of 60 fps at 5k. Ready to move on up to gear that packs a bigger punch? Pre-orders kick off this Thursday, while upgrades are slated to commence in July.

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Source: RED

Eyes-on with Sony’s brilliant 4K OLED monitor prototypes (video)

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The 30- and 56-inch 4K OLED monitor prototypes that Sony introduced yesterday are sitting prominently in the company's booth here at NAB, and they're really quite something. These sets offer wider viewing angles and reduced color shift compared to previous-gen monitors, and Sony is emphasizing the technology's color accuracy. We got a taste of the 56-inch, 3,840 x 2,160 model back at CES, but it looks like we can extinguish all hopes of this monitor making it to the consumer market anytime soon. Instead, it will be available to professionals working with 4K content. Even though the prototype won't make it to our living room, we couldn't help but marvel at the image quality: to say that the footage of Carnivale popped off the screen would be an understatement -- colors were just that vibrant and details were incredibly lifelike.

Meanwhile, the 30-inch, 4,096 x 2,160 model is destined to hit the market sometime in 2014, and it's plenty striking itself. Like its larger sibling, the relatively petite model looked fantastic, with very sharp details and bright, vibrant colors. Sony wouldn't share pricing information -- heck, booth attendants wouldn't even let us get close enough to get a good shot of the monitor itself -- but we did manage to snag a clip of both panels in action. Granted, it's impossible to judge the quality from our compressed eyes-on video, but if you can't make it out to NAB, you'll just have to take us on our word that these really are quite stunning.

Gallery: Sony prototype 4K OLED monitors eyes-on

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Christie’s latest 4K projector sports 60 fps output, six-figure price tag (eyes-on)

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Christie Digital Systems unveils first 60 Hz 4K projectors with sky

When a 48 frames-per-second version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was released, some viewers questioned whether high frame rates necessarily translate to a better viewing experience. Whether or not you embrace this trend, it's clearly not going away. Case in point: today, Christie Digital Systems introduced two new 4K projectors capable of 60 fps -- a "world's first," according to the manufacturer. Unveiled on the NAB show floor, the 35,000-lumen and 25,000-lumen models display extremely crisp and bright images -- big-budget car commercials and surfing footage basically pop off the screen.

The projectors are available for pre-order now, so it'll likely be quite some time before they begin showing up in your neighborhood cineplex. Their price tags ($125,000 for the 25,000-lumen model and $161,000 for the 35,000-lumen D4K3560), not to mention their bulky 250+ pound bodies, make them destined for state-of-the-art cinemas rather than home theaters. If you do manage to squeeze one of these giants into your den, we'd be more than willing to drop in to catch a flick or two. Take a look at the 25,000-lumen D4K2560 in action in our eyes-on video after the break -- it looks incredibly sharp and vibrant, despite the reduced brightness output.

Gallery: Christie 60Hz 4K projector eyes-on

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Intel announces next-gen Thunderbolt with 20 Gbps throughput, 4K support

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Here at NAB, Intel just introduced the next generation of its Thunderbolt interface, which promises a data rate of 20 Gbps in both directions (on each of the two channels) as opposed to 10 Gbps for the previous version. Of course, the company stepped back for a moment first, boasting that Thunderbolt currently has about 200 licensees, and more compatible devices -- along with new, thinner cables -- should be coming out in the following months. Building up to the big reveal, Intel also shared some info about its new Thunderbolt host controller, (code-named Redwood Ridge), which will be built into some of Intel's upcoming fourth-gen Core processors.

But let's talk about the real news: the next-gen Thunderbolt tech (code-named Falcon Ridge) enables 4K video file transfer and display simultaneously in addition to running at 20 Gbps. It will be backward-compatible with previous-gen Thunderbolt cables and connectors, and production is set to ramp up in 2014. An on-stage demo with fresh-off-the-press silicon showed the new Thunderbolt running 1,200 MBps, which is certainly a step up from what's currently on the market.

Update: We've added a video of the Thunderbolt demo from Intel's stage. Hop on past the break to check it out.

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Red Motion mount eliminates shutter judder, we go eyes-on (video)

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Red announced its new Motion lens mount prior to opening its booth at NAB, and now we've had a chance to see this guy in action. The mount, which is compatible with the company's Epic and Scarlet cameras, is meant to fix the CMOS rolling shutter problem. The Motion includes a liquid crystal shutter that's placed in front of the main sensor and is timed to engage when the sensor is fully open. It also adds up to 8x neutral density, which can be enabled electronically through the camera UI with 1/100-stop precision. In a demo at Red's NAB booth, the camera captured every flash of a strobe -- without the new mount, some flashes would likely slip through the cracks. It's set to ship for $4,500 in the fall (or possibly this summer), and will be available with Canon EF or PL mounts. You can see it in action today in the hands-on demo after the break.

Gallery: Red Motion mount hands-on

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