LiveReply - IBC Amsterdam

3D has had more than a few negative descriptions attached to it during IBC, with the word headache usually figuring somewhere, But Kevin Murray, systems analyst at NDS, admits that ‘nightmare’ might be more apt. He told a packed audience at IBC’s ‘What can stereoscopic 3D offer? ’ session that television was going to force graphic designers and associated disciplines to think very carefully about how they handled 3D graphics.

“While everyone accepts that 3D is going to have serious problems”. He explained that over-sudden movements towards the viewer might well result in the viewer might well result in the viewer flinching, and spilling their cup of coffee. ”Nevertheless, the vast majority of our test viewers like it and say they want it.

“But the technical challenges, especially for graphics, are huge.
Imagine placed?
What about subtitles?
In the US you have to cater for on-screen emergency alerts.
Were do you put the on-screen bug?
How should you handle EGP-type overlays, or-coming next-updates?
What about the interactive layers?
How will you handle the huge amount of on-screen data in a 3D sport game?

These have all to be thought about, and planned for, and a consistency achieved”.

Murray told delegates that, as if this wasn’t enough, there were then the problems of video manipulation.
Shrinking a video image to a picture-in picture was fraught whit potential danger unless handled sensibly.
For those broadcasters supporting PVRs they’ll have to consider how to cope within 3D, such as the fast forward button “ Depending on your ‘tick mode’ algorithm the end result could be interesting!”

He said broadcasters needed to think long and about where to think long and hard about where to place subtitles and similar captions.
“in 2D they are overlaid. In 3D it is extremely easy to introduce troubling conflicts that will not help eyestraim”

In a classic case dammed if they do, and dammed if they don’t, several organizations have asked the DVB Project to resolve growing tension over standardization for Open Internet TV Hybrid Broadcast Broadband.

Prior to a DVB broad meeting during in IBC, Ulrich Reimers – chairman of the DVB technical module, confirm: “People from all sides of the debate have approached us and have said the DVB is the right body to take it on board. They do not want another set of walled gardens.

“The situation is ridiculous. But I honestly don’t know if we can resolve anything, or if we can resolve anything, or if there might be some kind of harmonization”, he added. “We are coming to a point where things cross corners of the industry not used to the impediments of standardization.

Standardising the user interface is a must. Services cannot look totally different”. Personally, Reimers was not sure that the DVB is the right body in this instance.
“All I know is that people are starting to get very nervous”, he said. “Maybe the markets concerned are strong enough, and the initiatives on offer (Canvas and HbbTV, etc) can live side-by-side.”

Former DVB stalwart Peter MacAvock, now EBU technical’s program manager, believes the DVB could offer help in the area of transferring high resolution, long format content over the internet, but he had a stark warning.

A pioneer to DVB involvement with data heavy content is its plan to introduce the ‘Internet off satellite’ technology DVB-RCS. “We are developing a more efficient uplink, and more efficient higher layer structures for DVB-RCS,” said Reimers “Basically it is for getting internet content to public”.

Remote, dynamically scalable services already offer business solutions without the need for local hardware and software platforms.

But that is a very different proposition from handling the large files inherent in broadcast content and processor-intensive software needed for post.

Yet we are seeing new collaborative software as a service tool, on offer in areas like editing and graphics.

Can broadcast facilities be delivered from a cloud, with the same quality and flexibility we expect today? ….

The free-to-air broadcasting industry cannot afford 3D said David Hill. The chairman and CEO of Fox Sport Television Group – US.

“We are still getting over the cost of HD”, he told the packed keynote audience in the Conference Forum.

Showing a stunning 3D tape of sport (Box, Nascar, Nfl) he said that as a producer he “lovers” 3D but as a business executive worried about the bottom line ha “hates” it.

“A bunch of people made money on HD, but not us”, D.Hill told the audience for the ‘evolution sports’ session. The problem is there is no reasonable way to charge advertisers more for HD pictures. “3D is a case of fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Let me tell you, the broadcasting industry will not be investing in 3D technology until we know if we are going to be reimbursed one way or the other. I am only talking about the part of the broadcasting industry that I control but if the others have any sense they will say exactly the same thing”.

The BBC is to allow third parties the ability to run the technology behind the BBC iPlayer on their own websites.

The mechanism of the arrangement, whereby broadcasters might share or license the SDK or even develop it further with BBC Research and Innovation engineers, have yet to be worked out.

OpeniPlayer is the project formerly know internally to the BBC as Marquee and is intended to encourage a write once, publish anywhere specification for iPlayer.

This is an important goal as currently there are 23 different version of the iPlayer ported to different platforms.

The topic of discussion:
“Content consumption in the youth market” , will embrace all that is good about UGC and the digital revolution.

Advertising Martin Sorrell believes that the television industry urgently needs to bring down production costs.
How can we do that without losing sight of editorial quality and programs diversity?
Trend-tracking to develop new programme ideas by listening to the noise on social networks is certainly one way to pick up the buzz.

One of the most disruptive changes in the media industry in recent years is the sheer diversity in the way that consumers - and particularly young people - enjoy and exchange content.

They communicate with each other by whichever method is closest to hand: sms, voice, video and more. And the expectation is that video and audio content should be as accessible and as easy to share

Discovery Reply - Great interest for Digital Asset Management solutions built on Surface.

Live Reply - Social Network meets broadcasting, DEDE and Gateway Web 2.0 applications are dedicated to the trend of media convergence

10-15 September 2009 – Amsterdam
Live Reply takes part to the IBC, the leading international forum for the Media industry, and shows Web+Mobile+TV Solutions