Mediacast, 2004

Mediacast, 2004 Mediacast used to be THE big spring show for all things cable and satellite. The SCTE used to share a stand with the CAI at the show but neither organisation has attended for a few years. Graeme Young, deputy editor of 'Broadband', went along this year to see how the show is going.

The Mediacast Venue	Mediacast, 2004 Mediacast 2004 opened its doors at The ExCel Centre in London's Docklands on May 25th and the early crowd suggested that the show was going to be well-attended. This year there was a strong presence from the far East with Chinese and Korean manufacturers showing some interesting products both for cable and for satellite operators. The predominant themes this time were HDTV, online radio, and the anticipated analogue to digital switchover. Solid-state flat screens were everywhere, only a handful of CRTs were to be seen but their devotees were still to be heard criticising the picture quality and longevity of the new technologies in displays.

Digital TV The Digital TV Group demonstrations of HDTV were highly informative and superbly presented in an hour-long session. The 1080 line pictures were sharp, though some artefacts of digital processing could be seen by the trained observer. That apart, the advent of HDTV sometime in the future is to be welcomed wholeheartedly. Aside from the growing talk of HDTV, the large numbers of Set-Top Box manufacturers represented at Mediacast indicates a strong market for these devices, probably spurred-on by the imminence of changeover (only a few years away) and the current lengthy lifetimes of analogue TV receivers. Amongst a plethora of Far-Eastern products, Fusion Digital Technology of Harrogate stood out with a comprehensive range of STBs and PVRs. Of the latter, an innovation is the PPVR that downloads video material to a hand-held unit resembling an MP3 player in size, but on which the downloaded material can be replayed.		Flat panel displays on the Arion stand.

	Summary. This was altogether an interesting exhibition, though somewhat smaller than was the case a few years back. Many of the big players were absent, possibly because of the numerous shows of similar scope taking place across Europe, America and Asia during these months.



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