In mid 2015, there was a growing problem for my office related workspace. For nearly a year, I had learned on my own how to design the best workspace for a vertically challenged guy in a home environment. Many of the text was from posts of April 2016, with some concluding thoughts for the future.
Steven’s Blog
NAB Show – Review
So yours truly came back home late Thursday afternoon after one of the best days of his life, not because of drones, 4K video or some other “shiny” object; but experiencing so much I wished I had done this earlier.
So in this post, I’ll summarize the technological discussions in the seminars at the NAB Show, taken place at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the third largest in the world behind two in California. Makes Hartford look like doll house! Doing quick math it’s nearly 15 times the size, and some shows I went to Connecticut was only to tradeshow floors long, while the other few were not used. So yeah it was huge. But everything west of the Eastern Time Zone is large.
NAB Show – Review, part two
One of the other discussions was using LTE to replace existing Electronic News Gathering technologies that are decades old. ENG for many years made it easier to do live shots from the field and feed stories into newsrooms. ENG was a very complex method. For many years it wasn’t just the transmission method of microwave dishes being pointed to receive antennas or satellite dishes pointing to the stars. Most of this technology was based on transmission not for reception so hearing “return” feeds from the station, the interruptible feedback the earpiece to ether hear intercom or live program (known better as the IFB), and seeing yourself required at least multiple phone lines from the field, a commercial two way radio with the station side having one or two channels completely open to broadcast the non delay feed of their programs, etc.
Due to the relevance of high definition, tapeless newsgathering, and sometimes the complexity making it hard to do a live shot in tight quarters; some companies are pushing for the idea for local TV stations to use their existing radio signals and turning them into their own 4G networks.
Sometimes 4g means LTE or Long Term Evolution or WiMax. It almost functions like a Metro area network for WiFi from what I know from the outside. Basically existing radio dishes on the ENG vans and receive sites would not need to be replaced, but the boxes that tie them up would, so there really isn’t that much rip and replace like the other stuff that was preached in the show.
A lot of local TV stations producing content are using a boatload of civilian 4G networks from the mobile providers, and by using this method, the costs would go down and any control of latency could be done through both a management system and intelligence of the device and app. Essentially if you have too many live shots going on at once the system will ether pick priorities or make you wait. If you have say 4 live trucks and 1 chopper, and the system is designed to take up to 7, then you’re all good because this type of software is pretty beautiful.
Post NAB Show Commentary, part three
On Sunday of the NAB Show, The Next Big California Shakeout was the subject using Metapub. While some claim that funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is funding Big Bird, Nova, Arthur, or All Things Considered, that is far from the fact. CPB funds smaller market stations whether it’s PBS or NPR stations.
The context for this was developing metadata for digital and traditional radio stations that use HD Radio or Radio Display Services. Currently many radio stations display mostly “static” information, such as talent, song information, and other information. Some vehicles with RDS encoders can match album IDs against what is being received, since RDS currently broadcasts text on on HD Radios.
The Metapub system is a real paradise for coding, since it uses XML and other technologies to pull information from the NPR hub.
This process changed last year using a new system called Radio DNS, that almost acts as an Electronic Programming Guide (you know like what you can retrieve on your set-top box or how the old Prevue Guide used to work) This process enables producers to push out little bits of information within 24 hours in advanceto poll the Metahub
On Monday, a very interesting subject of news gathering was discussed. The use of replacing your existing microwave Electronic News Gathering to build your own 4G network. How this works, from the speakers and from questions asked by yours truly is replacement of boxes in your ENG vehicles, choppers, and alike and certain radio equipment at the receiving sites, the studio to transmitter links or STLs and the equipment inside the station. Basically it uses the same radio spectrum but from what I know it’s basically being transmitted over IP.
Basically 4G is also known as Long Term Evolution or even better Wi Max. If you think of it in the simple context, WiMax is like a large scale WiFi and if you can build a strong internal WiFi then this is how WiMax/4G/LTE can be done.
Because it’s a data network, you can bundle other thing such as the IFB, the prompter, video and audio on the same channel. Traditionally most live trucks required seperate radios for IFB, return feed from the station (whether it was an open OTA feed on a two way radio; or a simple antenna receiving the station’s transmitter pictures or in some cases IFB signals are basically using “music on hold” from the station’s PBX system.) A lot of field cameras that are using Panasonic’s P2 camcorders are PCMCIA based cards to record uncompressed video. These same slots can support a modem and you can now do liveshots (albeit rough not be the be all, end all) on the camera. You also see better pictures (real HD video) from the field because reporters are uploading packages from USB enabled modems on edit notebooks that get fed via FTP drops over their IP network.
The latter two requires broadband mobile Internet. With this innovation, your mobile bills are cut suddenly using the same technology but you own it instead.
In one slide, CNN had replaced their DC ENG network with receivers at multiple locations but fed back to their base over fiver.
More stations are moving to IP and engineers are more savvy to IT according to these speakers. The concern of a completely IP based ENG operation could have unintended consequences. You could theoretically cram a bunch of feeds more than the system could handle. However according to the folks that did their talk, automation and self intelligence can prevent too many feeds from jamming in if you had all six live trucks plus your copter coming in and the system being overloaded. One feed could take precedence if it went that far.
iPAWS was another interesting subject.
#Shift Happens or #Shift is Happening
Nice choice of words, Cisco!
On the Tuesday of the NAB Show, Cisco’s evangelist spoke for nearly 45 minutes speaking about the future (or the “shift”) to Software Defined Networking.
Post NAB Show Commentary, part four
Grounding!
What a sexy subject!
Well it was. Compared to the virtualization, IP and IT gospel preached nearby, this had a standing corner only crowd.
From a speaker in Florida known as the lighting capital of the world, he started to discuss a Florida emergency dispatch center that used an old Motorola radio system. The problem is if one part goes down, the entire system needed to be replaced., as a result the cost was nearly $100,000 with an insurance policy.
Of the recommendations:
- racks – do not touch concrete (where water is)
- The National Electrical Code is barely legal and it’s not good enough for data centers.
- Telephone grounding – attach to electral service, nearest to the ground. Lighting travels down on telephone lines (not up.)
- Be careful when bundling wires (cross contamation)
- Bolt in circuit breakers, use double nuts and bolt washers
- Do not daisy chain!
Most often, data centers are more prone due to the IT’s lack of electrical engineering, and their need to keep costs down, remember IT is profit center, not a division (Clickford’s words).
The Good Ole Days of the Genius Bar
Many years ago, Apple introduced a very innovative service delivery system, at the time Macintosh and iPods called the Genius Bar. Without poking fun at these people or the concept thereof, this is how Apple mastered the concept of “repairing relationships” between the customer and their Mac or Apple. Continue reading
Is Software an Expense?
They say software is the real beauty of technology. The inner technology is the most valuable in the field. While it’s cheaper for say a technology company to avoid producing too much hardware using off the shelf parts at a razor thin margin, the real question is can people really afford software, and why is that not a “commodity”? Is the inner beauty could very well be it’s own worst enemy?
SOTD: Is Amazon overpriced?
Is Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) overpriced?
I am one of the biggest skeptics of this company. I feel like I’m stuck in 1998 all over again and basically this same question has been asked over and over like it was a startup: has Amazon truly made a “profit”? Is the stock worth it’s actual value? Is robots and other distribution centers and very razor thin profit margins by selling everything for almost for free actually valuable? If some box store or mum and pop store who has been closed by this company, and if the numbers are not accurately reported; and the numbers aren’t reported accurately, then is Amazon liable for misleading the public for sketchy numbers? And is Amazon’s Web Services better known by it’s initials as AWS going bankrupt like what Cisco claimed last fall? And how come those numbers are vague?
SOTD: Stock of the Day
Today, I’m introducing a new feature. It’s called the Stock of the Day. It’s not because the markets are up, and everyone is flocking to it like a fashion statement. No I do this because I jumped on the bandwagon in 1999, but followed extensively till about the Financial Crisis. I’ll post advice from someone who isn’t from the financial capital; and any advice I cannot be held liable. Do your own due diligence before acting.
Mother’s Day and Radical Feminism
I thought I’d express some editorial not on the weekend of Mother’s Day because that would be insensitive.
From what I read a few years back the New York Post ran an editorial stating that the woman (I am forgetting the name) who came up with the day was not a mother and noticed years later that it was over commercialized. This is the classic example of the haves vs. the have-nots. She wasn’t a mother but noticed from the outside looking in that they were undervalued. Till the days when Hallmark went overboard and made this almost a global holiday for that group.
It’s time to retire the day because afterall it’s commercialized instead. All we are doing is spoiling women for all the wrong reasons.
I still believe fathers are undervalued even more than mothers. I mean look at how Father’s Day always lands during graduation season. Do you think it was coincidence or something else? The cynic in me think’s its the latter not the former. Why would you cramp an appreciation day during a season that’s always going to reoccur, especially on the East Coast?
I mean if we celebrate Mother’s Day, then are we supporting the crazy mothers who write online diaries masqueraded as a “newspaper”? Where do we draw the line? Is it more than just supporting “mothers”?
Some of this I think lands at radical feminism. This concept is well past “equal pay”, the “equal rights”, or destroying the “man’s world” work environment. I do not like how women are being marginalized; and many women are suppressed to believe in one man’s view or loose their jobs, I’m talking about CNN’s Alysn Camerotta (the only smart blond on the Fox News Channel till they let her go. A recent interview explained her bad experiences at FNC; which is very consistent to other complaints.) Other women in other fields have struggled as well. The radical feminism however, is more destructive than just trying to get the foot at the door because your t–s are in the way. No, its women trying to be like men to get at the door. The “I’m a woman hear me roar” is the most aggressive and even threatening. Men themselves who act like lions or wolves are just as bad. This is why IT departments need to be shut down and the arrogant and cocky IT guys should live in their almost deceased mother’s basement. (And collect state checks.)
I am not saying that women’s gender roles shouldn’t be redefined, it’s their attitude, arrogance, and mindset that is similar to why they hate men the first place; causing adverse effects that would make men go gynophobic or worse – hate them as well. By causing this synthetic hate, then you’re making feminism run out of control.