Each week I like to take a few minutes and share select trade news articles with students in my New England Tech classes. It’s critical in any field to remain current, follow emerging trends, best practices, and the various challenges that face the industry.

Below are three articles from the past week that were briefly discussed during class:

1. NewTek Unveils TalkShow video calling production system at IBC 2014 - NewTek

NewTekâ„¢ today unveiled TalkShowâ„¢ VS-100, a video calling production system designed specifically for television studios and live video producers. With TalkShow, any television or live video producer can easily reach 300 million monthly connected Skype users and incorporate them as guest speakers into live programs with full-frame Skype video calls.

2. Weather Channel Owners Said to Consider a Sale – Ad Age

The disagreement with DirecTV highlights the potential weaknesses of networks that don’t negotiate carriage contracts in conjunction with other channels. While NBC Universal owns a portion of the Weather Channel, NBC’s sales and distribution team doesn’t work on its deals, giving the network limited leverage over pay-TV operators.

3. TiVo announces TiVo Mega, a rackmount DVR with six tuners and 24TB - Arstechnica.com

…TiVo announced that the company is aiming big with its next DVR, the TiVo Mega. With a release date currently scheduled for the first quarter of 2015, the Mega will come in a 10-bay, 19″ rack-mount enclosure that appears to be 4U tall, judging from the PR images. The Mega’s bays will be filled with hard drives in a RAID5 array, yielding 24TB of storage.