Every year, during the two-week period leading up to the NAB conference, my inbox is flooded with hundreds of new technology press releases. Before heading out to the show, I sort through this stack and try to identify potential topics and talking points that might pop-up in panel sessions and meetings. This process also helps me understand the countless acronyms and compound words adopted by the industry to explain its latest and greatest gadgets and offerings.
    I’d like to thank the broadcast industry for going easy on me this year, because almost all of the releases I’ve received during the past two weeks contain striking similarities. The most prevalent of these is that they start with an acknowledgement that the broadcast market currently is a “cost-conscious, yet increasingly demanding environment.” The second most prevalent is that a majority of companies have decided to appease the market by combining existing — and previously separate — capabilities into a single offering. The third most prevalent is that the new combined offering has created an unexpected performance benefit for the customer.
    The speed at which these capabilities were integrated during the past year is quite remarkable. For example, in 2010, entire press releases were dedicated to 3-D signal compression capabilities. This year, 3-D compression suddenly finds itself seated fifth in a long list of features conveniently housed in a single unit and while this may excite the cost-conscious broadcast tech buyer, it raises a series question for developers. How long will it take for the entire signal processing and delivery chain to be crammed into a product the size of a laptop? Will broadcasters expect new capabilities to be included in next year’s mega-bundle? How profitable is this business model considering the number of broadcast networks in the market?
    Most would argue that this is just a natural development for a technology-based industry — smaller, cheaper, more powerful and more features. However, I suspect that tech developers will soon notice that the “cost-conscious environment” is more concerned with cutting the amount of time spent shopping on exhibit floors than it is about cutting the amount of money spent on a solution it really needs.