Every new acronym means yet further progress in the broadcast industry

Every new acronym means yet further progress in the broadcast industry: What’s in a name?  What’s the difference between an acronym and an initialization? An acronym is when the first letter of the full name or phrase is used to create a new word that you actually pronounce. So words like NASA and laser are included in that group (so is GIF for that matter, but that’s a can of worms we don’t want to open…). On the other hand, an initialization is a phrase that has been shortened to its first letters, and you say them individually: VIP, ATM and DVD, for instance. Or BRB, DND, CBA. Regardless of whether it’s acronyms or initializations though (and some that can be argued as both, see for instance the ‘scutee’ versus Es See Tee Eee debate…), there can be no doubt – the broadcast industry is packed with them. Of course, specialist language is part and parcel of every industry and niche interest, but in the broadcast industry it seems particularly egregious: why do engineers love naming things with a seemingly nonsensical string of numbers and letters, with only subtle variations between them!? Did it all start with Terminator and the T-800!? We have no shame in admitting that even we – professionals with decades of broadcast experience – occasionally struggle to keep the endlessly growing list of HEVC and SMPTE standards straight in our minds! But we must remember, one good thing about every new acronym is: it means yet further progress in the broadcast industry. Each iteration means a further refinement; a way of doing things more quickly, more efficiently, more reliably, with greater cost effectiveness and increasingly higher levels of quality. If remembering one more string of numbers and letters means we can deliver 4K video with next to no latency half-way across the globe or compensate for dropped packets to ensure immaculate delivery to audiences of millions – well that seems a small price to pay.