Postproduction storage is always a must-see at NAB. The first priority may be to see the products that won awards at last year's show.

1 Beyond will debut the low-cost Harmony II to NAB conventioneers. It may also have the highly scalable Harmony demonstrating a new workflow with high-definition video and graphics workstations, which will include fast rendering with an attached 1 Beyond Redline Render Farm.

Both Ciprico and its new subsidiary Huge Systems won awards last year. Ciprico will debut the DiMeda 1724 and DiMeda 10G SATA-based NAS solutions. The MediaVault SAN line from Huge Systems broadens Ciprico's product line so that it now includes lower-priced systems.

EditShare is still one of the lowest cost per protected gigabyte solutions available, and the system works with a wide selection of NLEs. At NAB, EditShare will also be promoting the EditShare news systems, complete integrated turnkey systems for news editing and playout.

Exanet will be promoting its highly scalable NAS solutions based on standard off-the-shelf hardware and its ExaStore software. Exavio offers a workgroup solution for high-end HD and digital intermediate workstations.

If you need lots of fast storage, Maximum Throughput offers high-end storage solutions for the HD, film, and DI marketplace. Medéa was recognized for its G-RAID FireWire 800 storage solution. However, that product line has been spun off as part of a new company, G-Technologies, or G-Tech, as they like to call it. The new company still has a relationship with Medéa, however. ProMAX was recognized for its low-cost RAID storage solutions for NLE workstations and particularly its Mac-based solutions. All of these booths will be worth stopping at to see what is new.

What: 1 Beyond 3817 HD laptop

What it does: Features include an up to 3.8GHz Pentium 4, up to 4GB memory, 200GB of internal storage, eight channels of high definition audio, and support for PCI Express bus.

What: Blackmagic Design DeckLink Multibridge

What it does: All in one analog converter that handles “any conversion task” in HD and SD video, including all YUV video conversion in and out as well as composite NTSC/PAL, four channels of analog XLR professional audio in and out, and eight channels of AES/EBU audio in and out.

What: Boxx 7300 workstation

What it does: Features dual AMD Opteron processors and nVidia nForce Professional media and communications processors to support the upcoming release of Microsoft Windows XP x64.

What: Canopus Workflow

What it does: Networked, shared asset system includes Canopus Edius HD/SD/HDV/DV realtime turnkey editing workstations; ProCoder Station, a new network-based encoding solution; and MediaEdge, a video distribution system that delivers professional-level video over LAN-based networks.

What: Dayang D3-Edit 5000

What it does: Dayang's multi-format postproduction station offers four-input multi-camera editing, effects, composit-ing, titling, transcoding, DVD authoring, and web creation in a single system.

What: HP xw9300 workstation

What it does: Features dual AMD Opteron processors with dual PCI Express graphics support for nVidia Quadro SLI dual PCI Express graphics cards. (SLI enables the linking of two graphics cards into one processing unit.) This is the first SLI-capable workstation that's using the nVidia pro Quadro series, not the company's consumer GeForce cards.

What: EditShare HD

What it does: $13,000 crossplatform HDV shared storage system includes 2TB storage, Xeon-based server, network switch (for up to seven workstations), uninterruptible power supply, and media management software.

What: Leitch VelocityHD HD/SD NLE

What it does: New version features a wide range of enhancements, including HDV and Varicam support. Leitch says that VelocityHD brings full-quality, realtime editing performance to the HD realm affordably.

What: Panasonic AJ-SD255 DVCPRO/DV recorder

What it does: This half-rack size VTR is light enough to be carried around, which helps when you have to work outside the edit suite. Works with both DVCPRO and DV for recording and playback whether with standard or MiniDV cassettes. For field recording, 66-minute cassettes can be utilized without the need for an adapter.

What: EditShare NewsRoom

What it does: Turnkey, HD integrated shared media storage system supports 10, 15, or more editors cutting simultaneously on their own attached workstations.

What: Ikegami HLM-900 monitor

What it does: This 9in. multiformat color LCD adds to Ikegami's line of high contrast ratio professional monitors, including the 22in. HLM-2200 and the 17in. 1700R.