RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif.—For the thirty-first time, leaders of the television and cinema content production community gathered here in California’s Coachella Valley to discuss the latest developments in media technology, industry trends, challenges facing the industry, network, and also take a short break from the winter weather.
The setting, as it has been for several years, was the Westin Rancho Mirage Golf Resort and Spa, and once again, the Feb. 15-19 event was a “sell out,” quickly reaching its attendance cap of 800 and organizers opening up a wait list to try and accommodate registration procrastinators.
Reviving Old Tech to Enhance AI Workflows
Looming over most of the four-day gathering was what the impact artificial intelligence has had on almost every business and population segment, especially media production.
While LED walls or “volumes” have been popular for lowering production costs by creating sets virtually, these large arrays of LED video screens do come with disadvantages. One of these is the necessity to plan camera shots to avoid generation of moiré patterns due to LED array size and camera scanning patterns.
Even with very fine pitch arrays, there is a critical camera zoom point at which moiré patterning becomes visible. Other disadvantages include the large amount of heat generated by massive LED display arrays, along with high construction and operational costs.
In the session “Case Study: Beyond the Green Screen: Virtual Projection’s Revival in Modern VFX Workflows,” Chris Barnett and Joseph Conover from Christie Digital Systems discussed how these LED virtual set disadvantages are being addressed by applying a much older Hollywood (and television) technology for inserting visual elements into a live scene, front projection.
“What’s old is new and what’s new is old again and coming back full circle,” said Barnett, the driving force behind the technology at Christie Digital Systems. “When I joined Christie, I started talking to some really smart people in the company about my past experience with virtual production.”
Barnett explained that he’d been experimenting with standard LED panels driven by high-speed processors to push the limit of what’s possible in virtual production, and soon realized that laser-driven video projectors in front-projection applications might be better suited for creating sets virtually.
“We’d been leaving this technology on the table and not leveraging it for no good reason,” he said.
Barnett’s work with this modern iteration of old technology proved successful in terms of being less expensive in both upfront construction costs and operational power requirements, and he also discovered that the application of frontal projection created a better environment for utilizing AI.
“You don’t know how difficult it is to actually control AI so that it can tell your story accurately,” he said, noting that AI “really struggles” when in-camera video effects are being used. “It’s really apparent once you start to learn how to control AI in separating your foreground and background in order to get the most out of your storytelling.”
Barnett observed that this reincarnation of technology was also accompanied by a reduction in costs.
“Studios are going bankrupt left and right,” he said. “People are rescaling, trying to figure out how to get ahead of this new curve. The upfront cost we’ve calculated is about half of what’s involved in building an LED wall. The energy used by these laser projectors is next to nothing compared to an LED wall workflow environment where the heat generated is massive. This is all about creating a more sustainable and accessible workflow."
Broadcast Television Session Returns
After an absence of several years, the Tech Retreat’s “TV Panel” returned, rebranded as a “Broadcaster Update” from Matthew Goldman, vice president, strategic & technical initiatives for Sinclair Broadcast Group.
Goldman reflected on the changes that have taken place in television broadcasting since the digital transition began a quarter decade ago, noting that the video streaming trend has resulted in younger people being unaware that “you can just put this stick of metal up and get television for free over the air. It’s amazing how things have changed and (there are) so many people who don’t understand what over-the-air television is all about.”
Goldman described the advantages of the ATSC 3.0 standard over 1.0, especially its ability to provide much more useful and timely emergency alerting information.
“We all know people — probably some of those in this room — who were in the devastating Palisades fire where a lot of our colleagues lost everything. The emergency information that was going out was incorrect and people were told to do the wrong thing. The new EAS system is hyperlocal.”
He also expressed disappointment over the lethargy in setting a date for sunsetting ATSC 1.0 television service, as it’s keeping broadcasters from rolling out the full feature set available in NextGen TV.
“The National Association of Broadcasters…came out with a document saying we really need to establish a clear timeline because we have to break ‘the cycle of hesitation’,” said Goldman. “The television manufacturers don’t want to add another (ATSC 3.0) tuner to their sets because the consumers aren’t asking for it, and consumers aren’t going to ask for it until there’s a compelling reason to do so. Broadcasters can’t add new features because there’s not enough bandwidth to do that.”
Goldman stated that this cycle of hesitation could be broken by setting a firm date for sunsetting ATSC 1.0 and this could encourage production of receivers with NextGen TV capability.
“The FCC said to add the [ATSC 1.0] tuners and that actually accelerated the transition and the turning off of NTSC.”
A Detour into Healthcare
The Tech Retreat shifted away from traditional content production for something of a first at the conference — the application of some 21st century moviemaking technologies in the healing arts.
The session “Beyond Film and Television: Media Technology is Shaping the Future of Healthcare,” featured Thom Belda, director of immersive experimental learning technology at the Mayo Clinic. Belda explained how the use of augmented/virtual reality, large language models and “digital twins’ is being applied in medical classroom training.
“Our goal is to advance medical science through the use of digital technology,” said Belda in explaining the emphasis on digital imaging at the Mayo Clinic, noting that even back in the 1930s the Mayo brothers had hired a medical illustrator to provide drawings to supplement those in textbooks of that period.
“This was a major achievement,” he said, observing that tapping virtual reality was a similar step in providing surgeons with more detailed information about the human body. “VR allows people to be trained in all sorts of surgical procedures, and 3D models provide surgeons with advanced information on what they’ll be getting into.”
He noted that “digital twining” or the creation of a virtual replica of a physical object was also useful in the field of medicine, with the Clinic applying this technology in several areas.
“The digital twinning of human pathology allows surgeons to be able to ‘hold’ whatever the pathology is, a tumor for instance, in their hands,” said Belda, explaining that this was particularly useful in complicated surgical procedures, making a “huge difference” in many cases.”
He also stated digital twinning allowed the creation of very accurate 3D-printed structures for implantation in patients.
Belda described the ongoing construction of a large new Mayo facility that was specially designed to embody the latest digital imaging and other technologies, including an immersive learning lab, a visual light studio for internal image capture, an area for augmented/virtual reality, as well as a large-scale LED “volume” for interactive experiences.
Another use of digital technology by the Mayo Clinic was on the digitization of some 150 years of medical history amassed by the facility to make it more accessible for research purposes.
“The goal is to advance medical science through the use of digital technology,” said Belda.
Breakfast Roundtables
Learning opportunities begin early in the day at HPA Tech Retreats, with discussions on new and emerging technologies and practices taking place over breakfast. There were 30 such “breakfast roundtables” on the program at the Retreat this year, with topics ranging all the way from “Art in the age of AI” to “Why Hollywood won’t adopt your tech.”
One of these was of special interest for those who have to cope with today’s RF spectrum congestion and the ever-increasing number of wireless devices vying for connection to broadband wireless networks.
In the roundtable discussion “Private 5G and CBRS for live broadcast and remote production,” organizer and moderator Jim Jachetta introduced conference attendees to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) and explained how this FCC-allocated and managed 3.55 GHz spectrum chunk can be useful when multiple users max out conventional bonded cellular spectrum.
“The CBRS spectrum is available on a shared basis with the government, satellite communications and wireless broadband companies that have purchased segments for use by their customers,” said Jachetta, CTO and co-founder of VidOvation. “There are several tiers and priorities involving its use. You go into the FCC’s data base and if a 10 MHz slice of 150 MHZ-wide spectrum is available you can get a minimum of one and as many as four slices.”
Jachetta explained that these public use “slices” could not be reserved, but if they were available a user could establish use priority by turning on a transmitter in advance of the event.
“A big use case would be at big sports venues,” said Jachetta. “You’ve got 80,000 fans in the stadium and they’re all on Instagram or filming the game and the Wi-Fi in the venue is oversaturated and the public cellular around the stadium is oversaturated, making use of bonded cellular video transmission difficult or impossible.
“This is where a private 5G network is very useful. Consumer phones can’t get into this spectrum. The band is 150 MHz wide, and if there’s not a lot of usage you can get up to four slices for a high throughput.”
Jachetta noted that most 5G bonded cellular gear used for video transmission is equipped for use in the CBRS band, and that most 5G devices can be tuned to operate in this spectrum by use of either a special physical SIM if the device can accept one, and also by an e-SIM.
Farewell to the Conference ‘Maestro’
On Wednesday, Mark Schubin, a very visible presence at HPA Tech Retreats, announced that would be stepping back from his post as unofficial conference “maestro” or “wrangler.” His involvement with HPA Tech goes back 30 years, with Schubin noting in an interview at last year’s event that he’d first heard about the gatherings during a 1997 New York City SMPTE Section meeting and made it a point to find out more about the event and to make plans to attend the 1998 conference.
From then on, Schubin, with his landmark flower-patterned pants and small bicycle horn used to alert attendees to the start of proceedings, has been an integral part of the Tech Retreat. (He recalled during the 2025 interview that early-on in his attendance, he had to take on multiple roles at the proceedings when members of a scheduled panel on high-definition TV didn’t arrive.)
“I flew out early and I got there, but there was a big snowstorm on the east coast, and none of those I’d invited were able to come, but they all gave me permission to present their policies on HDTV,” said Schubin. “So, I made a whole bunch of really large paper hats and I decorated them, and I would put on the different hats depending on which network I was representing at the moment, and people could ask me questions.”
Schubin was honored for his long-time service in a special ceremony Wednesday afternoon, with present and past HPA presidents on stage to thank him, along with a special video with many of those who had known him through the conference and television industry offering praise for his service. At the end of the ceremony, Schubin was asked to honk his bicycle one last time before it was laid to rest in a specially-prepared display case.
The 2027 HPA Tech Retreat will be hosted by the La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, Calif., Feb. 14-18.
