Station engineers attended a half-day BEC session about the analog shutdown at NAB2007. The session, called “February 2009,” took place on Sunday, April 15, and covered a wide range of issues that broadcasters must consider before the shutdown.
Some of the issues discussed include planning for a station’s final DTV channel change and dealing with the limited number of tower crews that will be available for antenna change-outs in a short window of time.
Immediately following the shutdown session, there was a four-hour BEC presentation on the transition to HD news production. The session was chaired by Dave Converse, vice president/director of engineering for the ABC/Disney TV Stations Group.
There is a BEC session on audio solutions for television on Monday, April 16, from 10:30 a.m. to noon. One hot topic will be loudness management. Monday afternoon, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., the BEC will discuss broadcast content from ingest to playout, highlighting topics such as networked storage, constructing a broadcast data center and workflow systems from sales to playout.
On Tuesday, April 17, from 9 a.m. until noon, there’s a media asset management for television session. That afternoon, at 1 p.m. there is an MXF for television session, which includes a survey on the latest uses of metadata in file-based broadcasting.
On Wednesday, April 18, at 2 p.m., the BEC sessions turn to repurposing broadcast content for wireless and other new media. The 90-minute session is called mobile reception of ATSC DTV signals. Simultaneously, there’s a session about workflow and interoperability for television.