I’m still a relative newbie to the NAB Show, and in large part, the broadcast vertical. Over the past few years, the Pro AV world has crashed the Broadcast party, so walking the show floor was more familiar this year than I remembered from the last time I was here in 2024.
This is only my second show in person since joining Future B2B. In a sense, I’m a good marker, because if I walked away with one thing that I understood and could use on the Pro AV side of things, that means a good, innovative, and informative show was delivered.
Well, I didn't come away with just one thing. Instead, I walked away with five takeaways.
Broadcast AV is here.
Convergence has been a big buzzword for the past few years. We see it on our end, teaming with our fellow broadcast publication, TV Tech, to put out the annual AV for Broadcast ebook. We can continue to use terms like convergence to describe the overlap, but it is time to call it what it is.
Broadcast AV.
Sony, Shure, Ross Video, Panasonic, Riedel Communications. These are all huge players in the Pro AV market and they were here in Las Vegas for NAB Show with some of the largest and most filled booths on the floor. Yes, they were showcasing production-quality cameras, switches, and technology of the sort, but this is exactly what corporate AV and higher education wants in today’s office space and classroom. They want live-event production quality and standards inside the conference room. They want hybrid learning to be impactful and inclusive, and that includes similar, if not the same, immersive audio solutions and PTZ cameras used on television sets and in sports production. Is there still more work to be done? Absolutely, but the convergence is, well, converged. Full out Broadcast AV has arrived.
Leave your mark.
Our own Mark J. Pescatore wrote in detail about how impactful the creator economy was on the show floor. Both the Creator Lab and CineCentral were full of inquisitive attendees and inspirational thought leaders from their respective spaces. Whether you are a podcaster, video producer, or social media expert, you are the leaders of the next evolution of where the digital universe is heading and having the right tools and technology for the job is certainly of the utmost importance.
However, the biggest lesson I think Pro AV people can take from the creator economy is how important your brand is. MrBeast was constantly discussed throughout several panels. James Stephen Donaldson, aka MrBeast, is one of the originators of how to go viral and you can link video shorts, microdramas, and much of the current way content is produced back to him. Several speakers referred to it as the "beastification" of content. You want to talk about branding? When your name becomes the description for some of the biggest trends that are out there, you have yourself a high-quality branding and marketing team. Pro AV manufacturers should be thinking the same way. Make your name ubiquitous to whatever product you’re going all-in on and you could be the next Q-tip.
Production is cool.
I have always been a cinemaniac. And the cool part about the NAB Show is it takes you behind the scenes on how that movie magic comes to life. Along with checking out the mock production sets from FUJIFILM, Sony, Canon, and Panasonic (which were all very fun to watch), I got to sit in on Roger and James Deakins panel, where the dynamic duo discussed how technology can bring movie magic to life and allow filmmaking to tell great stories. It was mind blowing. Roger Deakins is one of the greatest cinematographers of all time having shot many of the Coen brothers films, Skyfall, and Sid and Nancy, while winning a pair of Oscars for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917. It was very technical, and while I didn't understand everything to a T, there was an overlying theme throughout his tale.
The biggest tech take away was not how cool Deakins and his partner in cinema (and wife) James are, because trust me, they are the living definition of cool. No, the biggest takeaway is that Deakins, now 76 years old, has done what Pro AV needs to do to survive the quickly evolving technological landscape: adapt. Deakins first film was in 1977, before there was fancy light tracking (he spoke of going to Home Depot to find bulbs for certain effects). He filmed before LED screens could make an outdoor background come inside and become something magical.
Whether it was the LED takeover of sets, new lighting capabilities, or the digital age, Roger and James were always open to technological change. A lot of cinematographers are set in their ways, James explained, but Roger was always readily willing to reinvent himself to use the technology when appropriate. Technology, Roger added, has only been necessary to create the world the director wanted. He was very adamant that he doesn’t embrace technology because he likes it; he embraced it because it tells the story of what he was trying to create.
Have you heard? AI is EVERYWHERE.
Yes, AI was all over the show floor. But it was much tamer this year than in the past. The show floor used to be showcasing auto tracking, noise reduction, and other automated features, but this is common place now. It’s like going to buy a car and telling me it has a steering wheel—if your products and solutions don’t have AI doing at least a little something, you’re well behind the curve.
Instead, the show focused more on how AI is learning to make the broadcast space even stronger. I won’t bore you with the details because Mark wrote a very good summation of what I was looking at on the show floor, so be sure to check out what he had to say.
Sphere outdoes itself every time I’m there.
OK, this was more NAB Show adjacent, but certainly Pro AV overload. I got out there a night early and got to see Phish in Sphere. If you follow our running Sphere blog, you know Mark and I have been in there a few times and have seen quite a few different things.
I can honestly say each time it gets better. This time Phish partnered with Moment Factory and Sphere Studios to create a digital canvas of mind-blowing content. Each song told its own story, giving them an opportunity to dive deep into what could be done on the world’s largest LED display. Check it out for yourself in my compilation video above.
