Top 5 Products for Churches from NAB-NY 2022

NAB-NY is co-located with the AES Show (Audio Engineering Society), so it’s an attractive combination for production-oriented churches. You can see everything from high-end broadcast cameras and streaming encoders to a wide range of microphones and studio monitors—and everything in between.

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Live trade shows and conferences are back. After a record-breaking Capture Summit in late July, the NAB-NY (co-located with the AES Show) was the next, most recent destination for the Church Production team. With over 16,500 attendees, the event exceeded the expectations of the show organizers, evidenced by the painfully long lines at the attendee registration booths. Not enough staff, not enough printers. Ouch.

With plenty of new AV gear introductions, the event had lots to offer for church techs. The spring NAB Show (National Association of Broadcasters) in Las Vegas is indescribably massive, with nearly 2,000 booths and 100,000 people in attendance. The NAB-NY Show, held October 19-20 at the Javits Center in New York City, is much smaller and more manageable. We saw almost everything there was to see in a day trip from our Raleigh, North Carolina, headquarters.

Since NAB-NY is co-located with the AES Show (Audio Engineering Society), it’s an attractive combination for production-oriented churches. Church techs and creatives can see everything from high-end broadcast cameras and streaming encoders to a wide range of microphones and studio monitors—and everything in between.

The event offered over 100 vendor displays in a compact, manageable show floor. While we didn’t get to see every square inch, through our own meetings with exhibitors and intelligence from reliable sources, we proudly recognize the Top 5 Products for Churches from NAB-NY.

Blackmagic Design had a modest stand at the event—modest compared to the football field-sized exhibit they normally have at NAB’s spring event in Las Vegas. While most of Blackmagic’s vast ecosystem fits the church market quite well, the new DaVinci Resolve for iPad offers an entirely new form factor for one of the industry’s most powerful editing and color-correction software platforms. And best of all, the basic version is free. “DaVinci Resolve for iPad is truly a revolution for post-production, " says Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO. “Customers will have the power of Hollywood post-production tools for editing and color correction literally in their hands, creating a whole new generation of creative editors and colorists."

FOR-A turned heads at the event for the introduction of its new SOAR live production of software-based switchers, servers and graphics engines. These are robust systems with serious features including 12G/4K and SMPTE ST 2110 capability. With so many low-cost, high-quality hardware switchers available for churches, this new software-first strategy is remarkable for an industry powerhouse like FOR-A. It will be interesting to see how the competition responds.

NAB-NY was not the first opportunity we had to see Fujinon’s new X-H2 mirrorless camera. Our

staff was invited to Fujifilm’s (Fujinon parent company) X-Summit in early September. However, the NAB-NY event offered a larger, broader audience for this standout camera for church filmmakers. Our own Mark Hanna had this to say about the new X-H2, “Fuji has packed just a ton of good stuff in this camera. Some features seem to directly respond to other manufacturers' failures ...” We look forward to sharing several upcoming articles on church filmmakers using the X-H2.

Panasonic had several interesting product introductions, including the new AW-UE160 PTZ with

a newly developed 4K 1-inch MOS sensor. But their new AK-PLV100 4K CineLive Studio Camera with PL Mount stood out to us. It’s pretty high-end (read expensive) for small- to medium-sized churches, but it’s noteworthy because it’s the shape of things to come, in that it delivers large-sensor/cinema-style content from a unit shaped like a studio camera. Yes, there are lots of cinema-style cameras found in churches these days, but many smaller and less expensive units compromise on features and connectivity found in the larger, studio-style camera body. No, it’s not unique. Sony and Hitachi offer similar products. But the new AK-PLV100 4K CineLive Studio Camera from Panasonic is worth considering if you’re in the market, and it marks a continuation of the wider industry trend of using a shallow depth-of-field/cinema-style look in churches, performing arts and sports.

Shure also had several product introductions at NAB-NY/AES, two of which could be right for

churches: the new AD600 Axient Digital Spectrum Manager for wireless microphone and in-ear monitoring systems, and the new UniPlex subminiature lavalier microphones. First, the AD600 Axient spectrum manager can analyze available wireless spectrum and re-adjust faster than previous systems; it “sees” a wider set of frequencies, and it now works with multiple antennas. If your church needs bullet-proof, rock-solid wireless microphone connectivity, consider the new AD600 Axient system for wireless spectrum management and frequency coordination.

But it’s Shure’s new UniPlex lavalier microphones that get the “Top 5…” recognition for this event. Why? They seem to be designed specifically for church applications. They’re built to be affordable, durable and easy to use. Yes, most teaching pastors now use headset mics, but not all. And if you factor in all the other speech-only applications in churches, including film team interviews, the UniPlex lav has the potential to be a must-have tool for live sound engineers and video production teams working in churches today. Who wouldn’t want a few of these available at a moment’s notice.

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