Digital Fluency

At this year's Sundance I was talking to Satjiv Chahil, who long ago founded the Apple New Media division, used to cheerlead for a digital future that seemed pretty far away — video everywhere, on all kinds of devices, on networks that connected content creators and audiences without middleman distribution … blah, blah, blah. Now as HP's senior vice president of global marketing, he is marketing the products that do — well — most of what he said back in the '90s.

But for all the lofty talk of world domination through digital media, there was one little detail that came out in conversation that packed a simple punch: In the upcoming HP laptops, you will be able to play a DVD without booting your computer. At Sundance, the opportunity immediately comes to mind: You bump into a producer/agent/distributor you're trying to woo. You pop in your reel and deploy the patter (and handcuffs?) as you strain to keep your quarry's attention while your laptop spins up … and spins up … and spins up.

So HP has made a simple and logical acknowledgement of how life really works. People expect media to flow like text messages from a cell phone. In this vein, our Senior Contributing Editor S.D. Katz looks at personal media players with fresh eyes on p. 52 of this issue and evaluates their potential to display reels and presentations.

Also in this issue (p. 28), Steve Mullen takes his signature approach to the new JVC camcorders. Steve's been absent from these pages for a while, concentrating on the popular enewsletter he does for us: HDV@Work. If this story reminds you about what you like about Steve's mathematical musings, then you might want to consider a subscription, which you can sign up for at digitalcontentproducer.com/newsletters. The stories are archived there as well if you prefer to read them online.

And if you're working on your digital fluency, take a look at Franklin McMahon's review of Cineform Aspect HD (p. 42). Cineform is one of a few key companies providing important bridge tools for affordable HD. Also consider Jan Ozer's tutorial on lighting for streaming (p. 16). Both of these writers are modern video entrepreneurs, like many of you, and they have both gone out of their way to share what they are learning in the everyday course of their ever-changing jobs. If there are topics you would like them to tackle or questions you would like answered, please email us at dcpfeedback@prismb2b.com.

NOTE: In the run up to NAB, our inboxes fill up with product announcements, too many for us to share. This year, we decided to try something new. Through our Briefing Room blog, we'll be putting on an ongoing virtual press conference, aggregating pre-NAB press releases and other information as it comes in. You can go to blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/briefingroom and head to the NAB Newslink 2007 subcategory to follow along. It remains to be seen how much information will be disseminated pre-NAB — in past years, the trend has been to save an amount of news for the show itself. But this year, there is already quite a bit of news, especially for February. Publicists who wish to be included can contact us at briefingroom@digitalcontentproducer.com.