NAB day 3

Wow, there's so much going on and so much to see that the days here seem very long. Things that happened this afternoon feel like they happened yesterday.

I wrote down a list of things to look at today and promptly lost it. I have a whole stack of papers and catalogs that serve as a fairly good overview of the booths I visited today. I didn't get to see Kevin Adamson again. I guess I'll have to take a trip to VA Beach to do that.

The demo at the JVC booth reinforced the thought that the camera we bought for work was a good choice. They have a couple more models that can be used for live HD production with a wireless transmitter or in a studio configuration. They also have good features for movie makers (like an adapter to let you use 16mm camera lenses) as well as adding the ability to do 60p.

Panasonic was showing off a 103-inch plasma screen. That was really cool, but I totally missed it yesterday because of all the other displays around it.

We ate lunch in the Alladin's shopping center. Matt R and I had relatively cheap sandwiches at Max's Café while most of the rest of the gang ate at a sushi buffet.

On the way back to NAB Ena got a call telling her that she won the drawing in one of the booths and got 2 tickets to, I think, a circ du soleil show. After the expo closed, Ena and Tim went to the show. James B, Unc, Mike, Gus and I went to a Final Cut Pro user group super meeting or something and wasted money on raffle tickets for some really cool prizes.

Tomorrow, we'll go back to the exhibition hall and do whatever else looking around we need to do. We may leave early and go see the Hoover Dam. James B, is having us over to his house tomorrow night as well. Then after all that we have to get up and go to the airport super early so we can get through security in time to board our 6:15am flight. The sad thing is that I may be just about acclimated to the time zone difference.

I really only took one picture today and that was of an LCD field monitor sitting on top of a CRT field monitor with a light pointed straight at it. The CRT was so washed out that the picture was barely visible. The LCD was plain to see.

NAB day 2 - revisited

ahh, I feel rested.
It's nearly noon on the East coast (where I'm from) and only nearly 9am here. I'm still tired, but not achy anymore. Walking around all day yesterday made my back hurt. I met up with a guy I haven't seen since college. That was cool. CBN has about 30 people at the NAB this year. They are meeting with apparently everyone. Pat has mandated that everything they do (except maybe over-seas field work) will be HD in January.

The Ultra High Definition demonstration was very cool... very sharp. It has nearly 8 thousand pixels across but I don't know how many vertically. It also has 22.1 channels of audio. HDTV has a max of 1920 pixels across and 5.1 channels of audio. The ".1" audio channels is the really low subwoofer channel.

We also looked at a new camera in development called "red". It's not made by any of the major camera makers but rather someone who's has a lot of money and a lot cameras and wanted to make the camera that was perfect. It's a digital camera that's aiming to be equivalent to a 35mm movie camera. There'll also be one that's equivalent to 16mm. I think the big one is a 4k camera... we're hearing a lot of that term this year. We've barely got HDTV in the homes of America and we're looking at the next stuff. Of course, the better your source image is, the better your output it... even if it's down converted to SD.

We also watched some HD and 4k footage in Sony's booth. The amount of clarity and detail is amazing with 4k too.

Tim and I learned more about gamma, knee and matrix adjustments for his Panasonic HVX200 camera. I think the same kind of adjustments are available on the JVC GY-HD100 we have at the office. It's good to know what those functions do.

We also had some of the features of Maya shown to us. I think we could make some cool looking flaming stuff with that. The athletic teams at the University I work for are called "the Flames."

We did some looking at things for the studio but the first day of exhibits is more about getting acclimated to the goings on. I did learn that from one place it'll cost about $5,500 for a nice green screen corner set with floor. I have the guy's card.

I expect to be more focused on finding and trying products for work on my 2nd and 3rd days at the show.

NAB 2006 Day 2

I'm too tired to write something up now. I did post new pictures. Nothing too thrilling though.

NAB trip day 1

Hi there, 
There was a rumor that we'd have wireless highspeed internet at the hotel here. Nope. I guess that's false. Darn it. I'm using my cell phone (unlimited night time minutes... woo hoo) to dial in to LU's dial-up service. It's a blazing fast 14.4k connection. Well, it would've been blazing fast in 1991.

Anyway, I'm trying to upload pictures I took with my phone and make a little site to document our trip.

http://dwburman.com/nab2006

Monroe, VA

I came accross some info on the town we're moving to... I mean near.

http://www.brainyzip.com/zipcodes/24/24574.html

too much caffeine

I'm awake. Too awake for 2am. I think I over-did it it with the caffeine today... darn it.

homeownership

I'm now a home owner... at least I will be when the deed is recorded or whatever.

The place needs a lot of cleaning and a lot of work and most of the appliances and furniture as well. 

I don't have much $$$ to pay for all of that stuff. In fact, I have ~$800 less than I thought I would because of closing costs.

Oh well. 

Lots of work ahead.

Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

I've been drinking a lot of this stuff lately. It's been satisfying my craving for sugar water and the artificial sweetener is masked good enough for me.

Isn't it amazing how much pain is mingled in times of happiness?

I'm getting married in a little over a month. My brother is going through a divorce. I'm buying a house. It'll cost a good chunk of money to fix up and populate with appliances. Then there are the hurts that loved ones bear.

And on top of that I just can't seem to get applications/games installed on my new cell phone from my computers.

heavy...

We plan on closing on my first house within the next two weeks. Besides that, I'm getting married next month. These last two days I've really been feeling the weight of new responsibilities. The financial commitments are substantial. I'm going to have to change the way I spend money. I've been kind of free with it, the last few years... not irresponsible, mind you, just intentionally not frugal. I have no idea how much getting the house into shape is going to cost... well, I have some idea, it's just the specifics I don't know.

I don't know how much it'll cost to have the tin roof cleaned and painted. I don't know how much having gutters installed will cost. I don't know how much the HVAC unit will cost to be serviced or how much fixing the duct work will be. And those are just the things I won't do myself. There's much more to do.

Tthat's just the house. There are some other things that need to be taken care of, and I'm glad to do them, but I'm just not sure of the best way to do it. I suppose I should do some research... or have Rebecca do it since she likes that kind of thing.

I know it'll all turn out okay. I see this as a temporary struggle. Things may be fine by December but right now, I know how tight it's going to be.