I can’t lie about your chances. But you have my sympathies.
Rook, Alien: Romulus, 2024
A few short weeks ago, we made our annual trip to Sin City to see how much consumer electronics providers and tech were going to change the content creation, production and delivery industry; and it’s a lot.
During the early part of the week, industry players (networks, studios, streamers) made a series of announcements to reshape the industry.
At the end of the week and about 300 miles due West, mother nature reshaped everything — devastating the homes and lives of people in the industry as well as folks and businesses that support and serve the Hollywood
bubble.
CES has always been a hair’s breath away from the film/show industry. In recent years, the lines have blurred.
Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang and his firm has blended the industry by rolling out the new Blackwell GPU (graphic processor unit), GeForce RTX 50 series graphic cards and a comprehensive AI roadmap (Cosmos) for game developers/players, content production and AI-enabled tools, applications and systems across the industry
spectrum.
To illustrate the advances, Jenson said, “Blackwell is the most significant computer graphics innovation since we introduced programmable shading 25 years ago.”
To emphasize how far his firm has advanced the technology, he showed off DIGITS, a $3,000 laptop AI supercomputer, that will deliver 1,000x the processing power of a typical laptop and run 200B parameter AI models.
It may be “a little” expensive and a big overkill for the standard laptop user, but his vision of the next level of computing would put tremendous power, performance and capability in the hands of people on the set for content production/postproduction.
He also noted that the GPUs and AI models work with the firm’s Omniverse – a physics simulation tool – to create more realistic video and enable rapid expansion of AI-enabled development tools and technologies.
LG introduced a new family of premium WOLED monitors that are excellent for postproduction and game play.
The 45-in screens offer high brightness, true blacks, stunning colors and optimized curvature to put the editor in the middle of the action.
The units feature ultra-high 5K2K resolution and 21:9 aspect ratio to deliver optimum immersion in the creative work and provide one-touch, dual-mode switching between preset screen resolution and refresh rates.
Breylon’s virtual monitors are unique to say the least, using AI video-based processing with a lot of software and hardware advances compared to units we’ve seen at other events.
According to company officials, they can now upscale lower-dimension to multiple, higher-dimension streams using what they refer to as a “generative display system” using AI computation and optics to assign different depth values to content in real time for rendering images and information overlays.
With prices that range from $5-$8,000, it’s not going to be a monitor that is on every editor’s desk but if you’re heavily involved in immersive game or video content production, it could be an excellent addition.
We’re not big fans of headsets unless they’re for a special purpose – spatial and immersive content creation or if we’re really involved “in the game” video gaming.
In collaboration with Siemens, Sony unveiled its new XYN mixed reality headset that seems to be both comfortable and effective for animation, real-time entertainment production and yes, gaming.
The headset flips up to return to the real world and its ring/swipe controllers make it easy to point at things and move around AR (augmented reality) objects. For improved look/feel realism, the headset incorporates a pair of 4K OLED displays for vivid colors and deep black levels.
Home TVs are a mainstay of CES with outstanding units being shown by LG, Hisense and TLC. Even
Panasonic is back with some excellent screens, but Samsung seemed to offer the best lineup of QLED and OLED units with screens ranging from 32 – 98 inches plus.
The flagship Neo QLED 8K unit is slimmer and smarter thanks to Samsung Vision AI that improves upscaling, adaptive settings and Auto HDR Remastering Pro.
We were especially impressed with the Vision AI’s live translate feature that currently supports seven languages which can translate content being viewed in real time by translating the closed captions. In addition, they introduced a new AI-based voice removal with audio subtitle feature to enhance viewing enjoyment for the
visually impaired.
We’re biased toward professional film cameras for movie/video production, especially the Blackmagic family of devices; but we’ve also seen a growing number of professionals and social media creators using Apple’s iPhone with amazing results.
So, it was no surprise to see firms adding components – including lenses – to make the smartphone better and easier to use.
Belkin introduced the PowerGrip MagSafe which connects to an iPhone 12 or newer via a magnetic ring, making it easier to work with the slim device. It provides 10,000 mAh battery capacity and can be recharged wirelessly or with a built-in USB-C cable.
If you’re serious about your film work, the Tilta Khronos Ecosystem delivers rugged and light performance. It’s anti-slip quick-release system makes the unit quick and easy to set up with the iPhone 16 and still provides complete pass-through camera control.
Frankly, we can’t wait to see translation/localization everywhere, all at once so you can watch a project from anywhere in the world and immediately understand it.
Samsung rolled out real-time translation for their TVs, Timekettle and introduced their W4 Pro earbuds that provide two-way translation for phone calls.
A number of smartphone apps were also available to provide real-time translation for folks.
But we were especially interested in the progress that has been made to speed and lower the cost of localizing and voice dubbing for content creators.
Deepdub demonstrated its AI localization platform which they said would dub in over 130 languages complete with accurate emotional, linguistic and cultural nuances.
Officials noted that the platform is already being used by Netflix, Hulu and Amazon to quickly and economically make it easy for the services to make projects available to viewers around the globe, regardless of where it was produced.
The HDMI forum finally unveiled HDMI 2.2 and introduced Ultra96 cables at CES. The new standard promises up to 96Gbps bandwidth, will support up to 10K at 120Hz and a better latency indication protocol for improved audio-video syncing.
The new cables will be available later this year. They will be backward-compatible with existing HDMI connections, but delivering 10K content to your screen is a long way off.
It’s a lot like wireless folks promoting 7G products when the industry is only slowly beginning to deliver 5G service.
At the same time, content creators/studios/streamers are focused on reliably delivering 4K content to your screen and the target over the next several years is to move up to 8K.
Hope springs eternal.
We had to take a break from all of the miracles and promises of AI at CES.
We stopped by OWC to visit with folks who only did one thing – develop products/solutions that working entertainment pros use to get stuff done.
Larry O’Connor, founder and CEO, said that their new ThunderBlade X12 was designed to be a workhorse for creatives.
The RAID storage shuttle provides huge storage capacity as well as fast, sustainable data transfer rates when you’re working with 4K, 6K or 8K content.
He also said the company has recently added the Archive Pro system, which provides drag-and-drop LTO archiving backup that supports up to 18TB of native storage and 45TB of compressed storage with tape longevity of 30 years.
We know, “everyone” works in the cloud; but if you’re a video editor, 3D animator or DIT who wants to make sure you have a real copy of your content close at hand just in case …
Throughout CES, the major players in the entertainment industry illustrated that things are going to change dramatically this year.
Disney surprised a lot of folks at CES by kicking off the industry’s M&A activity with the acquisition of 70 percent of Fubo to deliver content across the board with their Disney+, Hulu + Live TV, ESPN+ and Fubo’s sports offerings.
It’s part of a new wave of industry consolidation Wall Streeters have been looking for and consumers might find it a good thing as bundled video services replace their 8-10 individual streaming services.
At the same time, the Venu sports bundle with WBD and Fox – which was already facing legal and legislative hurdles – will shut down even before it gets on the field.
In addition to discussions about the major organizational changes that will be taking place, there were a lot of pros/cons discussed in sessions and on the show floor as to how AI is going to change and impact content creation/production.
But the biggest content industry discussions/analysis at CES wasn’t about new products or mergers but how AI was going to reshape the content creation arena, especially following Nvidia’s keynote.
Huang outlined the new products, microservices and AI blueprints the company is making available to “streamline” the video pipeline and push the boundaries of the media and entertainment industry.
During his presentation, Huang noted that the company already has major partners across the industry that are introducing advanced filmmaking tools from camera control and preprocessing high-res video and 3D animation tools for faster, more realistic, more economic animated film production.
But amid all of the rose-colored discussions of the benefits and applications in the M&E industry, there were also signs that the technology will impact everyone in the film/show/video content industry – including bosses and viewers.
Creative Panel – Executives and technologists from studios and creative services discuss their experiences with AI technology during one of the CES panel sessions and include the good, the bad and the unknown.
Continued advances in Gen AI tools are already reshaping the film production landscape to tell more video stories, more effectively and more efficiently.
While technology will probably produce some job displacement, event speakers agreed that ethical guidelines need to be developed/followed to protect creative workers and enhance human creativity.
One speaker noted that it will take fewer people to do a project but that it also means they can focus on more projects. “The goal isn’t to replace humans in the process but to free them up to focus on their human and emotional storytelling skills which is what attracts people to watch a show/movie from beginning to end,” she emphasized.
Another speaker said that to date, AI-generated content lacked narrative depth because technology doesn’t understand the storytelling principles.
“People want to/expect to watch a project that touches them, makes them think/feel and that can only be delivered by humans,” he added.
We know these areas will be discussed in greater depth during NAB in a few months, which we look forward to covering.
But toward the end of CES, most of the attention was on the devastating fires that were ravaging the Hollywood/Los Angeles area, arguably the entertainment capital of the world.
It’s a poorly kept secret that the area has been struggling to keep movie and TV production in LA but it has been heartening to see the industry leaders – Disney, WBD, Fox, Paramount, Netflix, Sony, Amazon – have made significant donations to support fire fighters and first responders on the front line as well as prepare for the tremendous rebuilding that will be needed when the embers finally grow cold.
Disney’s Iger and WBD’s Zaslav both said California and the LA area have been their creative home for more than 100 years and that they would do everything necessary to help employees, friends and neighbors recover from the devastating losses.
SMPTE, EIF (entertainment industry foundation), SAG AFTRA, industry recognized producers, directors and stars as well as writers and crew members have joined in the fight and recovery.
It has been said that people don’t live in LA, they exist; but the affected communities are sprawling, diverse and united even as they are stratified by class and race.
Netflix co-boss Sarandos told employees, “Many people think of LA in terms of palm trees, red carpets, mansions and movie stars but those of us who call it home it’s much more. It’s a family made up of extraordinarily talented, hard-working people from around the world and in every walk of life. Angelenos and Californians come together in times of crisis, and we will rebuild.”
The industry is determined to continue to create, deliver great video stories.
If you’re moved to help those affected, you can contribute to the American Red Cross of Southern California, FireAid, MusiCares Fire Relief Effort, World Central Kitchen, Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles’ ReBUILD LA initiative or other credible organization.
This was definitely not something we could have envisioned to punctuate CES 2025.
Andy Marken is an author of more than 800 articles on management, marketing, communications, industry trends in media & entertainment, consumer electronics, software, and applications. An internationally recognized marketing/communications consultant with a broad range of technical and industry expertise especially in storage, storage management and film/video production fields; he has an extended range of relationships with business, industry trade press, online media, and industry analysts/consultants. Andy can be reached at [email protected]
