Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer, speaks on YouTube Red, an ad-free subscription service, during the first day of the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center Monday, April 18, 2016. Mohan also announced the introduction of 360-degree live streaming and spatial audio on YouTube.
Monday, April 18, 2016 | 6:51 p.m.
YouTube will begin offering 360-degree live streaming of some events, starting with this weekend’s Coachella Music Festival, Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan announced today at the National Association of Broadcasters show in Las Vegas.
During a keynote speech at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Mohan also announced YouTube’s launch of spatial audio, which reproduces sounds at different volumes based on the distance of the origin and intensity.
“Just as watching a concert in 360-degree can give you an unmatched, immersive experience, spatial audio allows you to listen along as you do in real life, where depth, distance and intensity all play a role,” Mohan told a crowd of more than 500 convention-goers.
YouTube’s announcements come a week after Facebook unveiled its "Surround" 360-degree video camera. But the social media giant doesn’t yet offer 360-degree live streaming.
New products on the showroom floor, meanwhile, included the U1, a high-powered drone with a cinema-quality camera for shooting movies.
Priced at $175,000, the U1 isn’t cheap, but it’s an alternative to helicopter-mounted cameras that can cost as much as $400,000, company spokesman Tom Hallman said. “It’ll easily exceed any of the aerial drone technology out there,” he said.
At the Canon exhibit, Product Director Hidehiro Takahashi was showing off an 8K resolution television with up to 16 times the clarity of 1080p high-definition TVs.
Takahashi said the technology could become commercially available as early as October, but the company has yet to set a release date.
With more than 103,000 anticipated attendees and 1,700 exhibitors, the 93rd edition of the annual trade show welcomed participants from 166 countries. It’s NAB’s highest attendance since 2008, spokeswoman Ann Marie Cumming said.
The industry-only show started today and concludes Thursday.
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