Having the population of a small city within one building may be boggling to the mind, but every spring in Las Vegas it’s a given, as 100,000-plus broadcasting execs, tech nerds and other interested parties storm the Las Vegas Convention Center for the National Association of Broadcasters conference, this year held April 24-27.

The NAB event, best known as a place where production software and hardware firms show off their latest and greatest product innovations, this year hosted 1,440 exhibitors from 130 countries, up from 1,380 in 2005, according to organizers. The jump is likely attributable to increased broadcaster need for new media and HD-related products.

Much like the past few years, HD technology was front and center at the show. Sony branded its NAB appearance HD for All, and delivered on the notion with cameras at various price points.

Its lower-end HD cameras have proven popular for feature film B-roll material, documentaries and the growing worship industry.

At the higher-end, Sony brought filmmaker Frank Coraci to its NAB press event, and the helmer spoke about using Sony’s Genesis digital camera system (manufactured in partnership with Panavision) on his new film Click, starring Adam Sandler and slated for release on June 30.

‘I don’t think I’ll have to go back to film again,’ Coraci testified.

Rob Sim, president of Toronto-based equipment rental house Sim Video, was looking closely at much of Sony’s wares, taking notice of Sony’s XDCAM HD cameras and their competitors, the Panasonic AJ-HDX900, which replaces the SDX900.

Although Sim has issues about whether or not the codecs of these cameras make them true HD products, he does believe their recording formats will be embraced over time, and appreciates that they will bring a new level of professional users into the HD market.

‘Those cameras were a highlight of the show, because they are opening up the doors for lower-price HD acquisition,’ says Sim. ‘Home improvement, gardening, cooking shows – most of what is on the specialty channels – want to go HD, but the budgets won’t justify going with high-end, high-def cameras, so I think XDCAM HD [cams] and the AJ-HDX900… will broaden the high-def market.’

Sim was also impressed by the variety of LCD monitors he saw at the show, from manufacturers including Panasonic, Cine-Tal and Ecinema – which was showing off a slick 40-inch color-grading screen – but what really caught his eye were a couple of ‘vaporware’ products from companies outside the mainstream.

Companies including RED Camera and Silicon Imaging foretold of competitively priced HD cams with one-inch imagers. Actually, that’s an understatement: RED claims it will be selling its camera – competitive in theory with ARRI’s D-20 film-style digital camera and the Sony/Panavision Genesis – for less than US$20,000, and will manufacture and sell its own lenses for less than US$5,000.

‘Somebody is either blowing smoke or the other manufacturers are charging way too much,’ laughs Sim. ‘I don’t know how they’ll be able to do it and break even, but if [these companies] can come out with a product that’s even vaguely competitive, we’ll be keeping a close eye on them.’

On the post side, Avid put on a strong showing this year, introducing Interplay, its new nonlinear workflow engine, but what Alex Olegnowicz, president of Toronto’s Imarion Post Production, was most interested in was the software-only version of Avid’s products, including Media Composer.

‘It lets me put more suites to work without having to invest so much money,’ he says.

Linux, the increasingly popular operating system that offers users an easily modifiable, open-platform experience, was a buzz word at NAB, as Montreal’s Autodesk Media and Entertainment officially announced its Discreet Inferno digital FX system for use on Linux, while Toronto-based eyeon Software also promoted its freshly launched Fusion 5.02 compositing package for the system.

Olegnowicz, who has some servers running on Linux, sees the logic of software manufactures rolling out product for the operating system, which is much less rigid than Windows XP.

‘It runs on any Intel processor, you can modify everything and the code is usually widely available,’ says Olegnowicz. ‘Some high-end applications like Smoke, Flame and Fusion would be great on Linux. It lends itself to these kinds of applications.’

But ironically, given that NAB is all about promoting new technologies, Sim and Olegnowicz agree that the show is becoming less essential because of the Web.

‘I think the show, as big as it is, could have accomplished the same over the Internet,’ says Olegnowicz. ‘I didn’t have to go there to see it. It is always nice to touch and play with the equipment, but I don’t think I have to go every year anymore.’

But the added value of NAB is now its handful of focused conferences, running in tandem with the convention, and this year every base in the production and post worlds was covered.

The NAB Broadcast Engineering, Broadcast Management, and Business, Law and Regulation conferences ran concurrently with the NAB convention, along with the well-attended NAB MultiMedia World conference, which focused on a different facet of the new media industry on each of its six days (April 22-27).

A highlight of MultiMedia World was the MoTV: Mobile Video and TV Forum, which offered a keynote from Bernard Gershon, SVP of ABC News Digital Media Group. A panel called The Race to Broadcast TV to Mobile Phones brought together mobile thinkers including Ian Blaine of thePlatform, Ian Trow of Envivio, and Bruce Gersh of ABC Entertainment Group, who told the room that ABC recently struck a deal with the American talent unions for mobile content production.

Perhaps it’s the increased number of panels that is luring people back to the desert oasis, as NAB reports that its 2006 edition had 105,046 attendees, a slight jump from 104,427 last year. The international delegation from outside of the U.S. totaled 25,500, up more than 2,000 from 2005.

The next NAB will be held April 14-19, 2007.

www.nabshow.com