NAB 2017 - The Year of Augmented Reality?

The annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas is upon us. We will all start arriving now and throughout the next week to share thoughts, ideas, innovation and realities on the state of our market. Thought leaders, pundits, veterans and newbies will all collide in the halls, in the sessions and at large in this annual chaos we call NAB.

This year promises the typical advances in increased resolution in the form of screens and devices and that race will inevitably produce some newsworthy milestones. We will also see the continuing trend for IP and IT technology continuing to affect every corner of the industry.  Of course, the effects of growth laws in processing, network and storage will be presented through new and enhanced products and workflow efficiencies, some marvelous and some mundane.

What will be new is anyone's guess and those conversations and arguments will start in earnest from the early meetings and late dinners to the shadows of the night in Vegas. What seems to be zeitgeist will be the presence of data in many ways technical, visual and affecting monetization.  Technically everything Internet of Things (IoT) will manifest itself in the form of wearables, beacons & sensors.  Whether for machine communication & intelligence or following athletes and talent through their daily routines, data will be everywhere and in every form.

The most obvious manifestation of data in our video world is Augmented Reality (AR). I would offer that this year AR and its companion Virtual Reality (VR) will dominate many conversations and innovations will be everywhere that follow these two separate but intertwined technologies. The question being are these real and lasting yet or are we still in a hype cycle. The answers will vary. The social networks, and the Billionaires who run them, would have us believe these are now and are the future at the same time. Recent announcements from Apple. Facebook, Google, SNAP and many others seemingly make the promise true and everything AR is right here and now. It is great that we have market leading companies spoon feeding us the future and it will be awesome to hear all sides of the story next week.  

What is certain is that we are on a journey to new visual experiences that were only in movies a few years ago.  We will have to look at the affect these experiences will have of those core laws of physics and capacity to contribute and deliver these experiences pervasively with quality and reliability to the masses. The good news is that data is in every industry, not just broadcast media & entertainment.  The risks and rewards are shared across society with industrial, medical, government and many other verticals all racing to embrace and monetize 'data visualized' in ways that we could only imagine a short while ago.

We look forward to seeing all of you that are going to NAB and continuing the conversation in 2017.

https://aernow.com/nab2017/

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