Apple's High Definition Future

First published April 21, 2004

By C. W. Oberleitner

JHM columnist C. W. Oberleitner returns from Las Vegas with a report on Apple Computer's "Moving Pictures Moving Sound Moving the Industry" announcement from last week's National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show.

Last week, just in time for this week's meeting of the nation's broadcast industry in Las Vegas, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced plans to effectively cut off analog TV as we know it by 2009. Ownership of that portion of the energy spectrum used by portable televisions and a few million TV owners who don't have cable or satellite service will revert to the Federal government. We were originally supposed to complete the transition from analog to High Definition Television (HDTV) by the end of 2006, but the nation's broadcasters claimed you and I weren't buying HDTVs fast enough to make this practical.

The simple fact is that even with the current "business friendly" administration in power, the government wants that bandwidth back. The reason being that, our cash strapped government stands to reap tens of billions of dollars in much needed revenue when that same portion of the spectrum is resold to the cellular communications industry.

While the folks who run the business side of America's broadcast industry are howling and screaming for more time to complete the conversion to HDTV their producers, editors, and engineers are rapidly adapting to and adopting the new technologies required to broadcast your local evening news and the movie of the week in crystal clear, razor sharp HDTV. And, nobody--at least at this year's NAB show--seems to understand that better than Apple Computer.

Interlaced, Interoperable - That's Life

Occasionally readers ask what stories about Apple Computer have to do with a site primarily dedicated to all manner of things Disney. The short answer is that Apple shares its CEO, Steve Jobs, with Pixar Animation. Pixar is Disney's production partner in a string of blockbuster computer animated films. The long answer is a bit more complicated.

It's easy to look back on history and see how and when things as we once knew them changed and tell the tales of those events, as we do here at JHM, to others. It is just as fascinating to stand at the bow of events, look at where we're headed and mark those moments in time when events collide and things as we now know them change forever.

Walt Disney may have known what he wanted Disneyland to be, but it took the research and planning skills of Harrison "Buzz" Price, C. V. Woods and the Stanford Research Group to make it a reality. Disneyland was a remarkable idea, but would it have been the phenomenal success it became as rapidly as it did if it weren't for the efforts of people like Philo T. Farnsworth whose scanning electron beam tube became first B&W then COLOR TV?

As scientist and author James Burke might say, everything (in life) is connected. When one event or discovery crosses paths with another the number of possible outcomes increases dramatically. The trick is being there to see it happen. This is how I came to be in Las Vegas last Sunday at Apple Computer's special event at the Venetian hotel, "Moving Pictures Moving Sound Moving the Industry."

At first glance, you might think that because of the ongoing feud between Disney CEO, Michael Eisner, and Apple and Pixar CEO, Steve Jobs, that anything Apple might introduce at NAB would have very little effect on the Disney Company. On the consumer side of things it's still impossible to order music from Walt Disney Records at Apple's very successful iTunes Music Store. And, Disney Motion, a new feature at Disney.com for broadband users, is only available to PC users running Microsoft Windows. But, Mickey and the Mac are more entwined than you might think.

For the past two seasons NBC's cutting edge, Thursday night comedy, Scrubs has been entirely edited on Macintosh computers using Apple's FinalCut Pro software. Scrubs, unlike most half-hour comedies, is shot like a movie, using one camera instead of two or three. Thus requiring extensive editing of scenes, shot from multiple angles, into a single piece of film. According to its producers the show is frequently delivered to the network the day it's supposed to air.

Scrubs may be an NBC show, it is, however, produced by Touchstone Television. Touchstone Television is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company. Touchstone Television isn't alone among Disney companies using FCP. According to Apple many local ABC TV affiliate stations, including the ABC TV Network Owned and Operated stations, use FCP for everything from editing commercials to the evening news.

In an odd twist, ABC's misfortune turned out to be Apple's good luck. As the network began to slide in the ratings, after being acquired by the WDC, its local affiliates started to see revenues decrease. Declining revenues forced local station managers to reduce operating expenses. At the same time, in order to remain competitive in the market place, they had to make the switch to digital video. Priced at just under a thousand dollars FCP, coupled with a Mac, video graphics board and monitors cost stations roughly half what a typical digital video editing work station cost.

Signs and Portents 2

So what did Apple announce prior to the opening of this week's NAB show and how did our Internet prognosticators, featured in last week's column, do with their predictions? As they did at last year's NAB show Apple confined its new product announcements to software from its Pro Applications group.

Detailed technical specifications for all products listed here can be found at Apple.com.

FinalCut Pro has been updated to be fully HD compatible. What's truly remarkable about this new version is its full HD "real time" effects and editing capability. Apple Digital Cinema Desktop lets you play back full-screen HD on an Apple Cinema Display. A "standard" G5 Mac, coupled with FCP HD and the Cinema Display can be assembled for under $30,000, about 1/3 the cost of a typical HD editing station.

As predicted, Apple's industry leading digital effects compositing software, Shake, was upgraded to version 3.5. It included new, previously predicted, "morphing" and "warping" features. DVD Studio Pro moves from version 2 to 3. It features, "slick new transitions, superb HD to MPEG-2 encoding, Graphical View, support for all professional audio formats--including DTS--and integration with Final Cut Pro HD..."

Two new product announcements met with resounding applause and cheers from the invitation only overflow crowd of 2000 or more broadcast industry professionals.

Xsan, which will not ship until this fall, is Apple's long awaited entry into storage area networking (SAN). All forms of digital video, including HD, require lots and lots of storage space. According to Apple, Xsan is a, "64-bit cluster file system for Mac OS X Panther, Xsan lets you share files and volumes up to 16TB (terabytes) in size on a high-speed Fibre Channel network. Up to 64 systems on the SAN can read and write to shared storage simultaneously..." Whatever that means the crowd went wild over it.

The unquestioned star of the show was Motion, Apple's new "motion graphics package with... Final Cut Pro HD integration." In real-time working with HD video it animates, text, particles and shapes, applies "behaviors" to objects, allows you add filters at full resolution and using Motion's advanced particle generator, you can adjust the angle, color and rate, in real-time, while the effect is playing. You get all of this for just $299.

In addition to being inexpensively priced, Motion's user interface, while sophisticated and full featured, is straight forward and much like Apple's popular suite of iLife applications, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes and GarageBand. Motion could easily become a standard application for home users and "aspiring" industry pros much like FinalCut Express and audio mastering application Logic Express have.

As previously mentioned, Apple confined it's special event announcements to software. No new Macs were introduced at this event. That doesn't mean, however, that those Apple watchers who predicted the arrival of new systems around the time of the NAB show were entirely wrong.

On April 13, five days prior to their NAB special event Apple updated its entry-level series of all-in-one eMac systems. The new eMacs have faster processors, ATI Radeon graphics, motherboards, more memory, better connectivity and best of all lower prices.

On Monday April 19, the day after the NAB special event, as several of our prognosticators predicted, Apple announced upgrades to its entire line of portable computers. Apple's high-end PowerBook models moved up to a top speed of 1.5GHz, while the student and consumer iBook now reaches speeds of 1.2GHz.

Even those Apple soothsayers who went further out on a limb predicting things like short range video capable, ultra wide band enhancements to Apple's AirPort WiFi products can claim a partial victory. On Monday Apple also announced version 3.4 of its AirPort networking software. The new version includes enhanced base station logging capabilities, improvements in WPA security implementations and improved antenna output control. There were not, however, any advancements beyond the systems current 802.11g standard.

The Last Word

There are dozens of companies exhibiting and demonstrating hundreds of new products and technologies at this year's NAB show. Any of these new products has the potential to dramatically affect the way you and I perceive the world around us or are entertained in the future. Why single out Apple, a personal computer maker best known for its struggle in the market place against the monolithic Windows PC computing standard and the phenomenal success of its personal digital music player the iPod?

Perhaps the answer to that question can best be summed up in an e-mail I received from a colleague who remained in Las Vegas to attend the full NAB show after I returned to Los Angeles.

Just want to briefly share my perception of this show. It's huuuuuge... most of the booths are dimly lit and quiet. Over and over again you see presenters emoting and gesticulating to an audience of one or two. The difference at the bright white Apple booth is breathtaking -- constant overflow of people at the presentations, standing behind railings or sitting on the floor, energy, energy, energy! It is truly exciting.

C'ya real soon!