An urgency for change galvanised IBC 2014 as more delegates than ever – a record
55 092 – showed up to learn how the industry is adapting to a revolution in
consumption.
Broadcasting remains the heart of business, and broadcast technology at the core of
IBC itself, but there was way more thinking beyond that. While there continues to
be heated debate about Ultra HD and how much of the broadcasting spectrum
should be hived off to mobile operators, new advertising models, VOD platforms,
personalisation and data also moved into the mainstream.
IBC’s headline act underscored the new dynamics at play. Google Europe president
Matt Brittin said the search giant wanted to make the web work on TV. “It’s very
easy to take an app and scale it with Android, or use it to improve the user
experience while moving at the development pace of mobile,’ he said in a keynote.
“[With Google’s help] the industry can take the clunky TV experience of 2006 to the
world of 2015 in one single leap.’
Pete Thompson, SVP Mediaroom Business Group at Ericsson, said that
broadcasting’s future is all about making TV move at “web speed’. This will
particularly appeal to the millennial generation who expect to interact with video in
a different way because of YouTube and social media.
“Pay TV companies have to innovate or they are going to die and disruptors like
Netflix and Google are going to figure out the business models,’ he warned.
Charlie Vogt, vocal CEO of Imagine Communications, kept up the theme, urging
fellow equipment developers to migrate from SDI to IP: “It’s termed disruptive but
actually it is a positive because IP permits the industry to adapt to change at the
pace of the web.’
Asked what he had learned from IBC, Lieven Vermaele, former EBU director of
technology, said: “I am trying to be controversial but IBC could become a software
only show, a sort of huge App Store, by 2020.’
Cloud and IP everywhere
There can’t be a single vendor not scrabbling to re-engineer its systems toward a
future broadcasting infrastructure based on IP. Even so IBC devoted a new section,
dubbed Content Everywhere, to companies geared for video over IP with plans to
export the event to the potent Middle East market in January.
The hardest piece to crack in the move to IP is live, but Sony demonstrated a live
4K signal conducted over internet protocol, and Gearhouse Broadcast, kit supplier
for large scale live events, announced it will equip itself with live IP production
technology from EVS subsidiary DYVI.
To give broadcasters the same agility to launch new services as completely IP-
based players like Amazon, Cisco talked about how the cloud can simplify almost
every aspect of bringing content from multiple sources to multiple devices.
“Take something as simple as the set-top box,’ said Yvette Kanouff, SVP of Cisco’s
service provider group. “Manufacturers keep having great ideas, which need more
STB software and drive a need for more powerful hardware – but they can’t keep
upgrading the box. But supposing the functionality of that box was in the cloud, and
could be managed remotely. Imagine what that would mean in terms of simplifying
operations.’
Even though BSkyB has a next-gen STB which is reportedly partly operational in the
network, its director of information technology Colin McQuade was skeptical: “What
is phenomenal about the broadcast industry is that it has built up a heritage of
super availability and super quality, and what I would like to see is that quality and
that super availability applied at scale to some of these Cloud platforms.’
Monetising VOD
In the absence of a standard means of measuring audience behaviour across TV and
digital platforms a number of new technologies are vying for broadcaster and media
agency attention. Start-ups like StreamHub and TVbeat aim to analyse big data
across platforms and incorporate social media feeds, others take a more niche
approach. With US ratings body Nielsen, Simulmedia is trying to link TV
consumption to actual purchase behaviour; CrowdEmotion, tracks facial movement
from a webcam and analyses the emotional response to programming.
UK gold ratings standard Barb is attempting a hybrid approach to blend time-shifted
viewing with panel metrics but admits the solution is two years away.
“The reality is that nobody has ever delivered a data fusion of this scale and
ambition anywhere in the world,’ said CEO Justin Sampson. “We are talking about a
new fusion every single night.’
UHDTV launch timings questioned
If broadcasters had a choice none of them would be planning a 4K UHD service any
time soon. Few have amortised their investment in HD (most of the world has yet
to upgrade from SD) and there are doubts about the business model for another
leap based on resolution alone.
Much of the debate centres on the merits of services delivering a phase 1 UHDTV,
by general consensus less of a killer app than the more full fat phase 2 version.
While phase 1 was approved by the DVB in July, the latter, which provides for
greater latitude for colour and light (High Dynamic Range) as well as higher frame
rates, won’t have trawled through the standards bodies until 2017.
“An HDR version of HD 1080p would deliver more bang for the buck [than phase 1
UHD] and is a more realistic technical target,’ said Jim Helman, CTO, Movielabs,
which represents the interests of the major studios. “But the marketing and product
side would argue that there is already lot of value in the 4K brand.’
In other words the UHD genie is out of the bottle, let loose by consumer electronics
manufacturers struggling to survive (as IBC ended Sony revealed a staggering
U$2.15 billion yearly loss). As displays flood the market, pay TV broadcasters feel
they have to act. At IBC, BT Sport’s director of TV Alex Green stated BT’s intent to
launch during the 2015/16 football season.
“Technically we could launch UHD today but we also don’t want to jeopardise the
market with a substandard service given the consumer experience with 3D,’ added
Stephan Heimbecher, head of innovation at Sky Deutschland.
Making the virtual a reality
Virtual Reality is another potentially disruptive technology given impetus by the
pending commercial release of headgear from Facebook, Sony and Samsung. For
less than the cost of a smartphone consumers could soon be strapping this
hardware to their faces for what is promised to be the ultimate in immersive
entertainment.
The number of rigs carrying multiple GoPros for capturing video in 360-degrees,
and the software to stitch the images together into panorama, is mushrooming.
“Everything is about to change with VR,’ declared Anthony Geffen, executive
producer, Atlantic Productions, in a session exploring the future of natural history
filmmaking. “There are massive breakthroughs in camera technology and headsets
almost daily. My worry is that it can’t be like 3D. You’ve got to have really good
content or VR will make people feel nauseous.’
Future of cinema exhibition
VFX legend and Hollywood outsider Douglas Trumbull flew in to give an exhilarating
presentation of his latest attempt to disrupt cinema exhibition from its 24 frames a
second inertia. If his high frame rate Showscan technology never took off in the
1980s, this updated version boasting stereo 3D, 4K and 120fps, projected using
Christie’s new laser system and complete with a Dolby Atmos soundtrack could
catch the eye of James Cameron as the director finalises scripts for the Avatar
sequels.
“The technical standards of cinema are almost identical to the technology standard
of TV,’ argued Trumbull. “But if we can make an immersive motion picture
spectacle of such power you cannot experience it on TV or a tablet, it becomes a
destination attraction.’
Plans by Netflix to premier first look feature films on its site look to through the
economics of cinema exhibition into crisis. Giant screen high impact technology
could provide a way out.
“There is no one silver bullet – not HDR or HFR or sound,’ said Trumbull. “It’s all
those things together in a symphony of quality.’
