IBC Archives – Page 4 of 10 – The Broadcast Knowledge

Video: Secrets of implementing successful technology projects

Posted on 25th October 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

We all know projects can spiral out of control and technology projects where small technical issues can become critical path blockers as much as the many stakeholders who have to be brought along for the ride are prime candidates for delays, overruns and even failure.

In this IBC session, project leaders are brought together to share what they’ve learnt from their disasters and successes. Moderator, Robert Ambrose, kicks things off asking Jim Dobel what he got out of his involvement in ‘the highest profile project disaster in the industry’, referring, of course, to the BBC DMI Project

DAZN’s Caroline Ewerton explains the rationale for her successfully delivered recent project deploying a virtual production facility for the streaming giant. TF1 follows on outlining their current raft of transformational projects which touch nearly all parts of the broadcast chain, concluding that people and expertise are the main bottlenecks whereby one person holds up a project because they are the only people who know the needed information.

Jim reveals that a lot of his work now is being done in the boardroom helping companies understand their desires to work in an agile way, both in terms of Agile principles and being able to adapt and change quickly. This speed of working, Caroline asserts, focusses the mind on KPI’s first and foremost rather than them being an secondary part of a project.

Involving the users as part of the project is key to efficiency, according to Thomas Jacques. TF1 includes a strong training programme as part of the change process to ensure that all staff have full information about how their work will change at the same time as having the opportunity to upskill themselves too. Jim agrees with this approach and endorses sharing facts not optimism with staff as part of a project.

The panel then picks up on the difference between projects which solve day-to-day projects which often come from visits to shows like IBC where someone can find a solution to a problem. But for wide-scale transformational projects in broadcasters, this needs to be led from the top with Thomas underlining that in any project, this is very helpful.

The session comes to a close discussing the need to have technology at the heart of projects, leading projects with managed service providers, convincing people to believe in the project and be part of the change.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Caroline Ewerton Head of Operational Delivery, DAZN
	Jim Dobel Partner, Q5
	Thomas Jacques Chief Technology Officer, TF1 le Groupe
	Robert Ambrose Managing Consultant, High Green Media

Webinar: Creating brand loyalty and new TV revenues with next-generation voice control

Posted on 18th October 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

With smart speakers, mobile phones and computers all sporting voice-controlled interfaces, it’s no surprise that smart TVs, Apple TVs and others can be voice controlled. This webinar looks at how much consumers expect control and what they expect.

Getting voice right, can be a really big differentiator in terms of enjoyment and confidence of a service and the speakers discuss how that can enhance retention and growth.

As seen with a recent update to Apple’s HomePod which allows it to recognise who’s speaking, voice can be used for personalisation, security and privacy when carefully applied to the service.

The webinar will also discuss fraud reduction and ecommerce opportunities.

Speakers

	Sebastian Reeve Director, EMEA, Intelligent Engagement Nuance Communications
	Pieter Vervoort VP Entertainment Products, Liberty Global
	Daniel Whaley Senior Architect, Product (Voice & AI) BBC

Video: Digital transformation of Media and Entertainment businesses

Posted on 16th October 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

Many people have little free time so there is hot competition amongst entertainment services for those precious minutes.

Red Bee Media’s Steve Russell explains how they have moved to a service based model for their platform which allows a single platform to be used by many customers. This allows them to focus on a single platform, making sure this can quickly iterate and provide new services the moment their customers think of them.

Simon Eldridge from SDVI tells us about he’s bringing manufacturing methodologies to the media industry allowing companies to work much more efficiently and Bill Gash talks about about how pay TV, mobile and Telco operators are consolidating to have the power to push back against the internet giants by combining customer attention, spending power and quality of customer experience.

The panel conversation starts discussing the ‘dark’ episode of The Game of Thrones which led to many complaints when viewers watched the episode in environments and on displays which didn’t show enough contrast – unlike the monitors in the grading suite – leading to people being unable to see what’s happening in parts of the episode. Quality of experience, says Bill Gash, is very difficult and the broadness of what constitutes quality of experience can be big challenge for producers who are new to directly delivering to the viewer.

Adapt and evolve is the ‘product management’ approach to launching services, explains Steve Russell, which bucks the trend of launching services which used to take a lot of Capex and a long project to set up. The more recent priorities are speed to market and constant iterations to improve the service.

iflix is a great example of an innovative service which has managed to achieve scale, from 50,000 to, now, 25 million subscribers in less than 3 years. Bill Gash gives this and other examples such as Formula 1, which show the possibilities of growing into and entering this larger market. This shows it’s not just about large players hitting back against the internet giants, but also a recognition that innovating can allow you to take those subs and those ‘minutes of attention’ away from other services.

The panel, from the Content Everywhere Hub, finishes by discussing the importance of adapting to the countries you’re operating it and by identifying the key advice for anyone developing their service in this market.

Watch now!

Speakers

	Steve Russell Head of Media Management & OTT Portfolio, Red Bee
	Tim Mulligan Executive Vice President and Research Director MIDiA Research
	Simon Eldridge Chief Product Officer, SDVI
	Bill Gash EMEA Sales Director CSG Ascendon

Video: IBC2019 SRT Open Source Technical Panel

Posted on 11th October 2019 by Russell Trafford-Jones

SRT allows unreliable networks like the Internet to be used for reliable, encrypted video contribution. Created by Haivision and now an Open Source technology, the alliance of SRT users continues to grow as the technology continues to develop and add features. This panel, from IBC 2019, is an update on what’s new with SRT and how it’s being used daily in broadcast.

Marc Cymontowski starts with an overview of the new features of SRT, mentioning its active Github repository, pointing to recent advances in the encryption available, upcoming FEC and the beginnings of SMPTE ST 2022-7 like redundancy. He also takes a look at how SRT fares against RTMP, the venerable incumbent technology for contribution of streams over the internet. Official support for RTMP will be coming to an end next year, so there is much interest in what may replace it. Marc makes the case that for the same link, SRT tends to have a latency of a half to a third and also performs better at higher bitrates.

RTP, the Real-Time Transport Protocol, is an important feature when it comes to redundancy. By using RTP’s ability to stamp each packet, the receiver can take two identical RTP streams – say from two separate ISPs and fill in missing packets on one stream from the packets of the other stream. This is a very powerful way of ensuring reliability over the internet so Marc makes the point that using SRT doesn’t stop you using RTP.

Simen Frostad then takes to the stage to explain why Bridge Technologies has added SRT support and how the SRT Hub will be a very important step forward. Then it’s Leonardo Chaves’ turn who explains how broadcaster Globo is using SRT to transform its video workflows and reduce OPEX costs to one third satellite costs.

Steve Russell from Red Bee talks about how they use SRT to create new, or lower cost, circuits and services to their customers. They’re able to use the internet not only for contribution from events but also to safely get video in and out of the cloud.

With these use-cases in mind, the panel opens up to thirty minutes of wide-ranging technical and non-technical questions.

Watch Free Now!
Free registration required
Speakers

	Brian Ring SRT Evangelist, Ring Digital
	Simen Frostad Chairman & Co-Founder Bridge Technologies
	Steve Russell Head of OTT & Media Management Portfolios, Red Bee Media
	Marc Cymontkowski VP Engineering, Haivision
	Leonardo Chaves Exec. Manager of New Transmission Technologies, Globo

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