The National Association of Broadcasters gathering, March 19-24 in Las Vegas, just seems to get bigger and bigger.

Conferences featuring more than 250 seminars and workshops kick off on Saturday, March 19, and the exhibition featuring more than 800 companies touting their wares springs into action on Monday, March 21.

Canadians going to nab this year will, as usual, hold their shopping lists close to the chest.

Doug McCormack, director of operations at YTV, says he and his team will be going to nab with a long wish list as they expect to fully convert the broadcaster’s production facility in Toronto to digital components within five years.

‘We’re looking at going digital, rather than staying with the analog system we’re using now,’ McCormack says. Digital compression for satellites will be of particular interest to him. ‘We’re looking at what the improvements are going to be for digital compression, and converting our plant to that use. ‘

Moving to digital represents a major expense for ytv. But there will be no tearing down the plant overnight. Instead, it will start by purchasing digital components like videotape machines and digital audio, buying the switching systems in the medium term. McCormack will use this trip to nab to see what is available, for eventual purchase six months or a year down the line.

ytv’s shopping list will include a digital non-linear edit system and a cd-rom system for commercial storage, employing a hard disk rather than tape machines for storage as is now the case.

Audio consoles and intercoms top the list for John Jay, operations manager for Atlantic TV System in Halifax, as he looks forward to nab. Jay says he will be going to Las Vegas to ‘window shop,’ scouting the vast aisles of exhibits, and not to take part in the side-show gab-fests.

‘You will want to be listening to what people say about multimedia, or the information highway, but that’s not why we’re going,’ he says.

The nab convention, running alongside the exhibition, is the world’s largest venue for the tv and radio industry. This March, as in recent years, the latest high-tech offerings of the computer world will feature prominently as broadcast networks in particular continue to embrace the digital domain.

Last year, the nab convention and exhibition attracted more than 64,000 industry attendees.

A major theme this year will be the much-touted information highway, which has broadcasters, telephone and computer companies rushing to merge with one another to take advantage of perceived opportunities at hand.

Among the keynote speakers at nab this year will be Bell Atlantic chairman Ray Smith, who will explain his company’s proposed purchase of Liberty Media and tci, the largest cablecaster in the u.s. market.

Sylvain Taillon, an animator at TOPIX Computer Graphics and Animation in Toronto, says he will be going to nab to inspect the latest developments in D1, or digital component technology. This is especially so given the current format war between Sony and its Digital Beta format and Ampex and its dct system. Taillon will view both for the first time.

Regarding advancements in software and peripherals, Taillon will look for information and demos on Wavefront Technology’s Kinemation software package. ‘We already have a demo in Toronto, but we will have a chance in Las Vegas to sit down with their engineers for a face-to-face,’ he says.

Taillon will be looking at Discreet Logic’s latest flame and inferno software for ‘Harry-type stuff’ now coming out for use on the sgi platforms.

‘I know that SoftImage has been working on on-line and off-line packages that you can integrate into one environment by purchasing pieces. We will want to talk to them about that,’ he says.

Taillon has also read about sgi’s fast-rendering onyx platforms.

‘Speed is obviously the main priority for us, rendering faster for what we already do: 3D graphics and animation,’ he says. ‘And sgi is the platform for FLAME, the big brother of our FLINT system. If ever we were to upgrade to the FLAME system, there are hardware considerations we would have to look into.’