TV TECH: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trends at the 2024 NAB Show?
MICHAEL DEMB: Broadcast continues its fast-paced evolution from traditional delivery to streaming, with the shift to IP workflows in production and playout picking up speed. All that and more is driving our industry toward technologies that facilitate remote operations, interoperability, agility, sustainability cost-efficiency and scalability. These goals are achieved by using innovation and tools, such as AI, automation, and of course – the cloud. Cloud-based solutions unlock greater performance, increase content availability, and decrease operational costs through improved resource allocation and streamlined workflows. But the migration to the cloud comes with its own set of challenges, which include engaging personnel with appropriate experience, acquiring the proper resources and tools to ensure a smooth migration, re-architecting existing applications for a cloud environment, and, critically important – providing data security.
At NAB Show we expect to see vendors presenting built-in capabilities that optimize on-prem, cloud or hybrid workflows aimed at reducing operational costs and the risks inherent in our changing industry.
In addition to cloud migration, the move toward IP workflows further enhances the agility of broadcast companies, enabling them to respond quickly to changing market demands and reach wider audiences. Look for technologies that interoperate between numerous resources and vendors seamlessly and integrate with business intelligence and analytics tools such as open-source solutions to enable the well-informed decisions needed to build improved business strategies. Beyond interoperability between best-of-breed solutions, media companies will require the technology flexibility to enable new business models, such as FAST, to be able to align their businesses with new demands.
TVT: What will be your most important product news?
DEMB: At the 2024 NAB Show, visitors to TAG's booth can explore the company's powerful monitoring and visualization capabilities. They'll see how TAG efficiently monitors operations of any size and delivers high-quality results at scale across various media workflows, whether in the cloud or on the ground. TAG will showcase solutions for real-time video visualization, data collection and more. Visitors can also learn about TAG's new technology developments and partner integrations.
TAG will demonstrate, in real time, how custom dashboards can be easily built and customized with well-known open toolsets like ElasticSearch, Kibana and Grafana to address any level of detail and show users how they can maximize the full extent of their data to gain invaluable insight from TAG’s Realtime Media Platform.
For the first time at a major industry event, TAG will demonstrate its recent integration with Amagi’s cloud solutions that highlight monitoring by exception capabilities and leverage TAG’s easy-to-use APIs. NAB Show attendees will also see support for TAG’s platform integrated into Skyline’s Dataminer media management platform for increased end-to-end visibility, automation and user control.
We will also preview a new Operator Interface that dramatically simplifies the operation teams’ access to TAG’s pre-defined functionalities and allows more intuitive control of the features required for day-to-day operation.
In addition, TAG will demonstrate its new support of advanced QoE measurement and new automatic tools to efficiently monitor subtitles, further enabling our customers to deliver incredible quality at scale.
TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?
DEMB: TAG’s development emphasis is on simplifying the user experience and enabling media companies to maintain agility while delivering incredible quality. The new Operator Interface removes complexity from the operations environment by working with the direct view of the video output that they are already accustomed to seeing. There is no need for a mouse because a simple and intuitive touch interface precisely mirrors the multiviewer. In addition, operators don’t need all the configuration capabilities, only pre-defined customizable ones that align with their operational needs. TAG’s interface will provide that customization while maintaining operation simplicity as a top value.
The real technology difference, though, is the extent of capabilities, supported formats and variety of uses that are included in the same platform and are available to all our users thanks to our Zer0 Friction methodology. Zer0 Friction guarantees customers take full advantage of their TAG licenses and maximize their resources, creating more efficient operations.
TVT: What is it about NAB Show that brings you back every year?
DEMB: NAB Show is an event where people from the broadcast industry come together to see new ideas and technologies from various vendors. They can compare and evaluate these technologies to find the best ones to improve the quality of their viewers' experience and service. It's a great opportunity for colleagues, friends and customers to meet and learn from each other.
For the company, NAB Show is an opportunity to present TAG’s latest and greatest additions to our already outstanding platform. It gives us the chance to meet with customers, and prospects from all corners of the globe to show them the ‘next big thing’ in monitoring, visualization and data insight. With all due respect to Zoom and Teams, there really is no substitute for face-to-face contact.
Personally, for me NAB Show is more than working the booth, or an excuse to see old friends and colleagues. It gives me the opportunity to see emerging technologies and witness the evolving history of entertainment year after year.
