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WELCOME “Evaluating how media companies are keeping pace with change”
A
warm welcome to the official review of the inaugural MediaTech 360 summit. Nestled strategically between the annual staging posts of NAB and IBC, MediaTech 360 was created to offer an independent platform for the industry to come together as suppliers, end users, and associations, to run the rule over the state of the marketplace and make sense of the technological and market forces affecting our business. From gaining a better understanding of the fundamentals of the transition to IP interoperability to dissecting the influence of emergent disruptors such as AI, MR, and UHD/HDR, the sessions at MediaTech 360 gave an honest appraisal of how all of these transformational elements are impacting the business and strategic decisions that media organisations are having to make to keep pace with change. To accurately convey this analysis, we worked extremely hard behind the scenes to build our most comprehensive and authoritative speaker roster to date, with executives from the likes of Google, IBM, Dell EMC, ITV, BT Sport, Channel 4, UKTV, YouView, Ernst & Young, AIMS, Cisco,
SMPTE, Ericsson, Imagine Communications, SAM, DTG, DPP, and more besides. To unearth the pearls of wisdom lurking within many of our panel discussions, it was down to our esteemed conference chairpersons: Simon Frost, formerly of Ericsson and now head of marketing and business development at AWS Elemental; and Niall Duffy, chief marketing officer at Virtual AI. Both men curated the discussions on both days and intelligently articulated the findings from each session, and on behalf of NewBay I’d like to extend our sincere thanks to them for the incredible shifts they put in to the event. The reviews in these pages take in the affiliated round tables, masterclasses and also our TVBAwards evening that recognised the talent and endeavour behind some of the most striking TV productions of the last 12 months. As we look forward to our 2018 event, I invite you to digest the findings from our inaugural summit. I hope you enjoy revisiting the first ever MediaTech 360.
JAMES MCKEOWN, CONTENT DIRECTOR, NEWBAY
EDITORIAL Content Director: James McKeown
Sales Manager: Peter McCarthy
Human Resources Director: Lianne Davey
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pmccarthy@nbmedia.com +44 207 354 6025
ldavey@nbmedia.com
jpriestley@nbmedia.com
Senior Account Manager: Richard Carr
Head of Production: Alistair Taylor
Contributing Editor: Neal Romanek
rcarr@nbmedia.com +44 207 354 6000
ataylor@nbmedia.com
Senior Staff Writer: James Groves
Digital Director: Diane Oliver
Managing Director: Mark Burton
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Editor: Jenny Priestley
nromanek@nbmedia.com
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Day One
TRANSFORMATION & DISRUPTION THE INTERNET ERA OF BROADCAST
M
ediaTech 360 kicked off with a short introduction from NewBay content director James McKeown before Day One chairman Simon Frost – head of marketing and business development, EMEA region, at AWS Elemental – delivered the opening address. Frost told the assembled delegates it was “fair to say” that the broadcast and media industry is in a disruptive time overall. He said the television industry is moving from the digital era and entering the internet era – which means plenty of transformation and disruption. “We’re on a conveyor belt, and this journey is affecting all of us. It’s driving significant change,” said Frost. “We come to these events to try and find out how we win in that environment, how we build strategies that put us ahead and make us more competitive. This shift affects the consumers and how they view content, how consumers’ expectations shifted every year. “That is a major problem for all of us,” Frost continued. “The big thing here is that we must figure out how to continually delight the end viewer – how do we continue to keep them happy, satisfied, make our services the most compelling, how to make our content the most sticky? It’s a big challenge.” Speaking of the event itself, Frost said: “The great thing about MediaTech 360 is that so much of reaching that end goal is about leveraging next generation technologies to put ourselves, our customers and our service providers ahead.” He concluded: “How do we do that? I think a lot of that is through internet generation technologies and we’re going to hear a lot about that. We have a fantastic set of topics.”
“We’re on a conveyor belt, and this journey is affecting all of us” SIMON FROST
www.media-tech360.com
MEDIATECH 360 5
Day One
GRADUAL CHANGE
OR FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION?
T
he first panel of MediaTech 360 was a look at the current state of the market. In the chair as moderator was MTM’s managing partner and co-founder Jon Watts. He was joined on stage by Martyn Whistler, lead analyst, media and entertainment, Ernst & Young; Daniel Toole, executive partner – media and entertainment industry leader Europe, IBM: and Dell EMC’s chief technology officer – media and entertainment, Tom Burns. Watts kicked off the session by asking the panel if they would describe the trends in the current market as fundamentally transformative or a gradual change. “Transformation is sometimes an overused word,” said Whistler. “You have to have a consumer who is changing. What they essentially want remains the same. What you are doing is changing the way you deliver that to them, so it’s transformation in the sense of how we do what we do, and not necessarily what we do.” “Technology trends are funny,” agreed Burns. “You overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. The singularities are going to be an interesting place to be.” The discussion then moved on to the confidence in the market. Watts asked if this is an industry in rude health or actually in a more challenging situation. “I like the word ‘confident’ in there,” said Whistler. “We do a survey of media executives globally and we have seen since 2010 that confidence is rising. In terms of deals and transactions, confidence in the macro economic environment, all of that is continuing to increase. And if you look at externally why that might be, demand for content is astronomically going through the roof, consumers want more content in more ways and on more devices.”
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IBM’s Toole was quick to disagree. “I think confidence is becoming more uneven,” he said. “Companies that are well positioned to capitalise on the kind of trends we’re talking about can really outperform. Companies that make poor decisions can see their share prices crash.” “For an individual broadcaster who used to make money by flogging advertising, that doesn’t work anymore so there is a tremendous amount of confidence that if we get as big as the web-scale obstructers we will be able to compete,” said Burns. “For an individual content provider, it’s not all about more pixels, it’s about this matrix of combinations and permutations that turns content into this liquid iron man entertainment services delivery; which is the kind of business the telcos, the OTT providers and traditional broadcasters are all in.” Of course, one of the biggest changes the industry is currently facing is the way viewers consume TV. “Apparently, kids these days like to watch video on their phones!” joked Burns. “That is the single biggest disruptor from a consumer behaviour that is driving a lot of the changes that we’re all coping with today.” “In the US, the traditional broadcasters are making a tonne of money from retransmission. Selling their shows to OTT or non-traditional providers has been a really nice way to bolster the bottom line. But now we see that those same OTT providers are poaching talent and driving up costs for original programme production, so it may have been a short-term gain to prep all of the broadcast revenues into retrans budget and to think that was going to continue forever. “But certainly, station groups are buying other station groups to become larger, which is again the scale argument.”
“Transformation is sometimes an overused word” MARTIN WHISTLER, EY
“I challenge the assertion that big is best,” argued Toole. “I think there is some really innovative stuff going on in some of the smaller broadcasters. Channel 4 went in early trying to do data, so I think there’s innovation already.” “There is still a lot of work to do for broadcasters to get their house in order,” warned Watts. “They have to manage what rights they actually own, and what metadata they actually have hold of. Having a conversation about your opportunity is very hard to do until you fix that part of the business first. Then you have to have a conversation about the opportunity and that’s where it becomes very sticky. I spoke with a broadcaster in eastern Europe recently and they were worried about a US VoD service, and how much that was going to get into their share.” The panel finally moved on to the future. Watts asked what they predicted for the industry in ten years’ time. “I wish I could tell you what was going to stick in 2025,” said Burns. “But all I know is that AI is very good at analysing and sorting metadata, and that
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will be the economic monetisation engine of the future. It’s already driving consumer behaviour. People may be able to make money from our data exhaust – categorising content aware AI is a very interesting engine to watch.” “It’s coming into the market today,” agreed Watts. “It’s still at the test stage, but five years from now it could be fundamentally transformative.” “There are a lot of crazy things coming down the pipeline for 2022. I find it interesting as to how consumers will interact with services. We are going to be consuming content in very different ways – the idea that you have 30-minute programming, an hour’s programming on devices has destroyed that, it’s a myth. You don’t need that any more. So as an industry perspective, how do you create a platform on the backend that could deliver very bespoke, very discreetly packaged content to the audience in a way that they want it? In three-minute bursts or 30-minute bursts? Currently, I don’t get the impression that the industry is set up to deliver in that way that the consumer wants.”
//SESSION The state of the market //MODERATOR Jon Watts, managing partner and co-founder, MTM //SPEAKERS Martyn Whistler, lead analyst, media and entertainment, Ernst & Young Daniel Toole, executive partner, media and entertainment industry leader Europe, IBM Tom Burns, chief technology officer – media and entertainment, Dell EMC
MEDIATECH 360 7
Day One
PAST, PRESENT,
FUTURE F
ollowing the first coffee break of the day, AIMs chair Mike Cronk took to the stage to deliver the first presentation of MediaTech 360: ‘IP interoperability update – a common roadmap’. He began: “We have a challenge before us. I’ve been involved with the broadcast industry for around 25 years, and the pace of change is astronomically faster than ever. “It’s extremely hard to predict the future. Who can know, with any certainty, which new technologies are going to take off? And how do we commit to these transformations while competing with a whole set of new companies that are more IT focused or cloud focused? “The goal is bigger than just IP. IP is really a means to an end that helps us transform this industry and allows us to compete in the future. He concluded: “You don’t want to buy the one that ends up being the loser. There’s a lot of confusion within the market.” Cronk was then suitably placed to welcome five industry speakers to the stage for the next session of the day: ‘IP standards and industry collaboration’. Moderating the panel, Cronk opened by asking for perspectives on the progress of IP standardisation in broadcast. Simon Browne, vice president, product management, Clear-Com, said: “It’s a very interesting journey. We as a manufacturer have to make a decision on what the standard is likely to be, because it takes a lot of time and effort to build standardisation for our products. It’s incredibly important for all of our customers to be able to connect with other devices; intercom does not survive on its own.”
8 MEDIATECH 360
Steve Reynolds, chief technology officer, Imagine Communications, added: “There was a well-established way of doing things. It is always difficult when you transition away from something that people understand well, but I think the approach that we took in laying out the roadmap to get to 2110 was actually a good transitional roadmap. I feel the momentum is building, but there is still a lot of work to do.” Howard Lukk, director of engineering and standards, SMPTE, added: “In 2015 we were very much confused. In 2016 we were still confused. And now, in 2017, we have settled with 2020 and we know where we want to be. In the future, there will be different standards even five years on from now. But I don’t believe that the IP architecture is going to change fundamentally.” Cronk then asked the panel whether the amount of collaboration has increased in recent years, and to what extent. Ronald Meyvisch, chief technology officer, Euro Media Group, addressed this: “I think the industry is more collaborative because they have no choice. For us, that is a good thing because you get to see which areas are most cost-driven. The first message from AIMS when it was established was that ‘whatever you are going to do, if it is not working with your competitors, we will never buy in’. That’s why, as a service provider, we decided to join.” Next on the agenda for Cronk was the question of what is next, and what areas we need to address. Taking the discussion away from technology itself, Brown said: “There’s a real need for training. The broadcast industry as grown up
//SESSION ONE IP interoperability update – a common roadmap //SPEAKER Mike Cronk, chairman of the board, AIMS
with a lot of expertise in the analogue world that has migrated to the digital audio world, and now it is one of a non-directed kind of audio, so it’s going into IT technology. The whole skillset has changed, and that needs to be handled – possibly within the AIMS operation as a training element.” Terry Kajiura, deputy general manager, project leader, live production solution planning, Sony IP&S, took a similar tone: “With Sony, it’s a standard IP training course. That’s already established since last June so it has been one year and collaborating with other manufacturers, not just Sony, starting with basic IP technology and so forth – that happens in Europe and also in China and collaborating with AIMS as well.” Cronk’s final question was aimed at the impact of telcos in the future. Can they make a serious play to be broadcasters? Reynolds concluded: “A lot of telcos are already in the business. As mobile bandwidth continues to rise, it gives them an even better bite. I think that’s a good thing. The content will get to the consumers who want to watch it. The pipe that sits in the middle probably becomes less and less important over time.”
//SESSION TWO IP, standards and industry collaboration //MODERATOR Mike Cronk, chairman of the board, AIMS //SPEAKERS Ronald Meyvisch, chief technology officer, Euro Media Group Simon Browne, vice president, product management, Clear-Com Terry Kajiura, deputy general manager, project leader, live production solution planning, Sony IP&S Howard Lukk, director of engineering and standards, SMPTE Steve Reynolds, chief technology officer, Imagine Communications
www.media-tech360.com
MEDIATECH 360 9
Day One
FOSTERING IP INNOVATION N
ext on the agenda was a live IP case study, presented by DWESAM Engineering director Michel De Wolf. The presentation looked to deliver implementation highlights and learnings from the very first build and operated full IP-based live TV production studio, titled the LiveIP Project. The project was the result of a collaboration between Belgium’s VRT and the EBU, along with multiple further broadcast technology partners Axon, Dwesam, EVS, Genelec, Grass Valley, Imagine Communications, Lawo, LSB, Nevion, Tektronix, Trilogy and Vizrt. “Standards continue to play a critical role in the industry and the LiveIP Project is the ideal use case to demonstrate how we can all work together to make IP a success,” said De Wolf. “This multi-vendor approach that focuses so strongly on innovation and collaboration is setting the stage for the future landscape of the industry.” The project spanned some 16 months between April 2015 and August 2016. The objective, De Wolf explained, was to build and operate a live TV production studio with state of the art IP-based and IT-centric hardware and software, while lighting up all of those industry buzz words – enabling the digital shift and new workflows, as well as proving the agility and scalability of IP, and doing ‘more with less’. De Wolf said: “Introducing this type of technology is a challenge, both for the vendors and the broadcasters. There is a need for a full operational set-up before anything can be carried out.”
10 MEDIATECH 360
“We’re ready for the IP transition, because the benefits promised by an all-IP future, over the SDI world in which we now live, are attractive and offer the opportunity to serve viewers in new ways. Perhaps more importantly, they will increase broadcasters’ flexibility to continue innovating so they can remain on top in our increasingly competitive business landscape. The presentation continued: “Critically, broadcasters need to determine a common, open standard for IP workflows to achieve ensured interoperability. Interoperability will foster innovation and efficiency that will enable IP to proliferate rapidly.” Using existing open standards SMPTE 2022-6, AES67 and PTP, VRT Sandbox Live IP demonstrated a high level of interoperability and leverages the unique benefits of IP to create efficiencies such as remote production and automation. In terms of technical learnings, De Wolf said: “The key in the LiveIP project is the real-time network. This ensured no overprovisioning, along with guaranteed bandwidth, easy configuration and integration, fast switching and strong reliability.” He concluded: “The software-defined network worked perfectly. No real blocking barriers were encountered. The system is very agile; far less cabling and glue! The operational crew did not have any major complaints, as the latency worked perfectly well. The only thing we did find was that new technical lingo is needed, as well as some additional IT skills to help the operation run as smoothly as possible.”
“Introducing this type of technology is a challenge, both for the vendors and the broadcasters” MICHEL DE WOLF
FORESEEABLE EVOLUTION OF OPEN STANDARDS – SDI over IP with separate audio and network time proven to work practically in LiveIP @ VRT (SMPTE 2022-6, AES-67, IEEE 1588v2) – VSF TR-04 will make this architecture as standard and enable a migration path to other video formats – VSF TR-03 will provide separate essence flows and support for future payload types including compressed formats that could enable 4K on an infrastructure sized for HD can be added in the future – Ongoing standardisation effort ongoing of seamless switching, identity model, device discovery, connection management and network management will bring the features required for full scale deployments
www.media-tech360.com
//SESSION Live IP case study – full IP-based live TV production studio //SPEAKER Michel De Wolf, director, DWESAM Engineering
MEDIATECH 360 11
Day One
RIDING THE ESPORTS BUS T
he penultimate panel of Day One explored the evolving relationship of eSports and broadcasting. Moderated by Day One chairman Simon Frost, the ‘eSports and broadcasting – the new frontier?’ panel was made up of Martin Goswami, director of pay and distribution, ITV; Ellie Reed, head of digital, M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment; and Lauren Foye, senior analyst, Juniper Research. Outlining eSports for those unfamiliar with the concept, Reed explained: “eSports is essentially taking gaming into a world of showmanship. It’s about watching people who are very, very good at playing games do their best in a way that is interesting for others to watch; much like the rest of the entertainment industry. It’s about creating live experiences and content interesting enough for viewers to watch at home.” eSports was first televised in the 1980s, but predominantly became popular across Asia in the early 2000s. It was still being televised into the 2000s throughout Korea, Germany, the USA and the UK. As it slowly lost traction, it spilled onto the internet, ultimately resulting in the birth a company called Twitch. It was acquired by Amazon in 2014, and popularised the concept across the US and Europe, with 43 million viewers per month in the US at the time of purchase. In that year, it was also the fourth most watched content medium of peak video traffic in the US. Summing up how far the medium has come, Frost pointed out that Staffordshire University recently launched an eSports bachelors degree. TWITCH VERSUS TELEVISION Goswami said that there are “several dimensions” to the Twitch versus TV debate.
12 MEDIATECH 360
“Broadcasters need to try to understand why people watch streams on Twitch. You firstly have people tuning in to watch a particular championship, but there is also a whole community there offering alternate commentaries, how-tos; all across an absolute multitude of different games and genres. “TV tends to concentrate audiences around particular editorial expositions,” he continued. “I think there is clearly a role for both. Twitch is unlikely to be toppled from its place unless the publishers themselves decide to do that, which isn’t entirely unlikely. TV, in its various forms from traditional to VoD to SVoD to every other modern method, has to figure out what it does better than Twitch. That could lie in a number of areas. It could be higher definition, such as 4K, or in the future, 8K. “It could be more statistics. Rather than just a live stream, TV could offer a multitude of statistics, much like traditional sports. It could also offer the content it offers for live sports – pre-match build up, half time and full time analysis, as well as live analysis during the game. He added: “Then there are backstories; most e-gamers have quite interesting personalities, so there’s potentially a lot that could be brought out there.” Reed chimed in: “What value does the user get from Twitch instead of TV? TV is a uniting force, everyone can watch the same show at the same time and experience the same commentary. That’s not where the gaming community came from. “They were largely ignored by popular culture, so they created this medium for themselves. It grew out of huge passion for the shows and games that they love. The production values are massively different
“If the value chain is defined, then there’s room for both TV and Twitch” ELLIE REED, M&C SAATCHI
to traditional TV, of course. Bridging that gap will be very challenging.” TV’S ENTRY POINT Viewers watching Twitch expect a different level of authenticity and production to traditional TV. Reed explained: “There’s room for both, and it’s interesting to look at the purpose of each platform as far as the viewer is concerned, and what value a user would get from watching eSports on TV instead. TV is a uniting force, with the idea that everyone in any given country can all watch the same show at the same time, and they talk about it with their family and friends as it’s happening, and they log onto social media and discuss what is happening, so that’s certainly a potential avenue for entry. Reed continued: “Sometimes that’s a good thing, but sometimes gamers want to see something real, raw and timely. For TV, it will be about recognising that the gaming
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community has a lot of value in original and immersive content. If the value chain is defined, then there’s room for both TV and Twitch.” Foye added: “There is such a sheer wealth of content; if people are interested in those products, they will go for a platform specifically for that. Quality of content, 4K, HDR, UHD... they could maybe be TV’s way in.” The panel revealed that monetisation could be an issue for live TV, with current models unsuited to the medium. Foye explained: “There’s a lot of content regarding live interaction with broadcasters, which is essentially ‘tipping’. We’re expecting far more advertising moving forwards, but it’s difficult to know how TV will implement that without scaring away viewers.” As the panel drew to a close, Goswami concluded: “The [eSports] bus is moving along, no one is driving it and no one knows where it is going, but it’s still going at some speed!”
//SESSION eSports and broadcasting – the new frontier? //MODERATOR Simon Frost, head of marketing and business development, EMEA, AWS Elemental //SPEAKERS Martin Goswami, director of pay and distribution, ITV Ellie Reed, head of digital, M&C Saatchi Sport & Entertainment Lauren Foye, senior analyst, Juniper Research
MEDIATECH 360 13
Day One
THE EVOLVING
ART FORMS T
he first day of Summit ended with a look at the impact of disruptive technology, in particular AR, VR and mobile production. The session was chaired by Virtual AI’s chief marketing office Niall Duffy and he was joined on stage by Luciano Carvalho Se, chief evangelist at Realities Centre London; VR producer Natalie Fox; the DPP’s managing director Mark Harrison and Nick Verkroost, COO, Seenit. The panel began with a discussion about the rise of mobile journalism. “A lot of people ask how good mobile phone footage can really be – can I really use that on a big-screen experience?” said Verkroost. “Content is not just about the resolution of the image. It’s not what defines good quality content. We’ve been watching grainy cat videos for as long as I can remember. Fundamentally, it starts with storytelling. If you can get to the person to whom that story really means something, who can be passionate, that’s hopefully what this idea of low cost mobile content can deliver for you.” The rise of mobile journalism, and the ‘Instagram generation’ means that a large number of new entrants into the industry have different skills to those who have been working for 10-20 years. Duffy posed the question, will those currently working in the industry be out of a job because “an 18-year-old can do this in three minutes and we can’t?” “It depends on which genre of media you’re talking about,” said Fox. “I think for journalism, news, sport, those industries are probably quite threatened by people who are able to quickly generate content on their phones and applications. In terms of big budget documentary making and film making and storytelling there will always be a hunger for that – whether it’s in VR or on the TV – there will always be a hunger
14 MEDIATECH 360
for slightly more crafted pieces of content. For me personally, I work in documentaries largely, and increasingly on more music immersive experiences. I’m not too worried so far.” Duffy then asked the panel about the adoption of VR, which has seen a huge increase in popularity in recent years. “If broadcasters tried to do this, we’d still be debating what SMPTE committee it would have to go through to come up with setting up the committee to figure out what standards we need to do this. And one of the most striking things about this entire space is that quality is not defined by a SMPTE standard. Quality is actually quality of content. Is that one of the key game-changers associated with these kind of experiences?” “From our experience, I think it certainly is,” said SeenIt’s Verkoost. “And you’re absolutely right. We went into this thinking we’d be working for publishers, broadcasters; they want to change the way they tell stories and make the audience far more engaged in what’s going on. In our case, it’s the big corporates who are coming to us and saying that they have huge problems with engagement within their organisations, CEOs and senior management teams trying to communicate with staff. Large corporates such as HSBC, Citi Bank, trying to explain to the new graduates coming through today why the business is a place you should think about starting your career and not joining a start up. How do you convey that story in a world of Facebook and Snapchat? It’s difficult. They don’t mind that there’s a standard in place or the pictures are a bit grainy. What they’re looking for is real passion and interest to tell a story.” Duffy then asked Mark Harrison, DPP managing director, if the lack of standards is a conflict for his organisation.
“Storytelling is an art form. It didn’t evolve because the technology required it” MARK HARRRISON
“I think that’s what’s really exciting about this,” said Harrison. “It’s these two parallel strands. There is a broadcast approach to content, and there is a non-broadcast approach to content, which by the way, is not synonymous with low standards. It’s outside the broadcast model but it’s the highest possible quality, so there’s that whole paradigm happening. One thing we’ve always known about change is that it’s never linear, so it won’t be that the broadcast model collapses and dies, and the other takes over. Some interesting things are going to happen, but I do think that it’s really important for broadcasters to remember what their core strength is, which is story telling. They’re incredibly good at it. It’s really hard to do well, and that’s their core still now.” “Storytelling is an art form,” continued Harrison. “It didn’t evolve because the technology required it. But I think for me at least the thing that VR does is that it fundamentally
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changes the way we have to think about telling the story. That as an art form has to start changing, it has to become more complex, sophisticated in the range of permutations that I have to think about in that craft – it’s no longer 16x9. I can go anywhere in my experience, and as a result, whoever it is that designed that experience, call them a storyteller or designer, they need to fundamentally change the way in which I engage in that process. I think that’s fascinating and it’s exciting to see what will come about.“ “It’s exciting to see where we’re at,” agreed Carvalho Se. “Whereas before you needed an expensive 360 camera, now there’s something like Insta360 which you literally just attach to your phone. It’s like the tech itself enables you to take that leap from the quality. You can also do that now with other tools that will enable you to capture content in a way that will be professional as opposed to stitching.”
//SESSION Managing the impact of disruptive technology - AR, VR, mobile production //MODERATOR Niall Duffy – chief marketing officer, Virtual AI //SPEAKERS Luciana Carvalho Se – chief evangelist, Realities Centre London Natalie Fox – VR producer Mark Harrison – managing director, Digital Production Partnership Nick Verkroost – chief operating office, Seenit
MEDIATECH 360 15
Day One
THE OPEX POSTER-CHILD Aspera’s Richard Heitmann presented a masterclass on the opportunities in the cloud and challenges of using it to move big files
M
edia companies are becoming increasingly reluctant to plop down huge sums for infrastructure and technology. Part of the reason is the shrinking of budgets, but the protean nature of digital technologies means that what you buy today may be utterly obsolete within two years. Budgeting on an opex model makes more and more sense, allowing companies to more easily upgrade technologies or switch suppliers. Cloud services are the poster-child for opex operations today, offering massive storage and growing compute power on an ad hoc basis, freeing media companies from having to maintain their own – inevitably limited – server farms in house. Aspera’s presentation at MediaTech 360 by Richard Heitmann, Aspera’s vice president of marketing, addressed current and up-andcoming approaches to the cloud and cloudbased workflows. Heitmann enumerated the drivers for cloud adoption. He noted that the first motivation for embracing the cloud was the shift of workloads. Cost optimisation was the most obvious advantage – opening up the previously mentioned opex opportunities. Cloud workflows can also improve agility and increase capacity, offering virtual storage and processing capacity. Cloud workflows also gave businesses the opportunity to extendir existing workflows.
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Through the cloud, they can preserve their current data centre investment by augmenting it with the cloud, rather than completely replacing it with a hardware upgrade. This hybrid approach also allows them to keep greater control over their data access (in some instances, companies may be forbidden by law or contract to storage data outside their premises). But should extra storage or processing power be temporarily needed they can turn to a cloud service. CLOUD CHALLENGES But modern technology is an ever-moving target and there are challenges to a cloud approach. The good news is data networks are now able to move very large files, the bad news is that files keep getting larger. “File sizes, bit rates and resolution will only continue to increase,” said Heitmann. “There is absolutely no indication that this trend will change. And the problem comes when you try to move these data sets. That’s when you encounter a problem with speed and reliability.” Heitmann pointed out that speed is also a factor of distance to the data centre, which brings up the question of selecting the right cloud provider. The best fastest servers in the world will do no good if they’re on the other side of the world. Control is essential too. Companies want greater security and more control, without impacting traffic.
“Because of some of the underlying problems with TCP, traditional investments in infrastructure will only get you so far” RICHARD HEITMANN
INFRASTRUCTURE IS NOT ENOUGH Many companies think that a rehaul of their infrastructure – better routers, better servers – will be enough to allow them to easily and rapidly move files to the cloud. But this is not always the case. “Because of some of the underlying problems with TCP, traditional investments in infrastructure will only get you so far,” said Heitmann. So what are the alternatives? “There is a service offered by most of the cloud providers,” said Heitmann, “where you can physically ship your data to the cloud. The idea that I have to increase my carbon footprint, drive to the computer store, buy a hard disk, copy my data onto it, stick it in a FedEx envelope and ship it to the cloud is a little bit antiquated, plus it exposes your data to unnecessary risk.”
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WAN ACCELERATION Heitmann pointed to WAN acceleration as another alternative. WAN acceleration can compresses individual files and reduce the amount of data sent over the network. WAN acceleration can also work by object caching or byte caching to reduce redundant network traffic. There are some downsides. Caching requires expensive hardware at each location. Object caching is an all or nothing process, and it doesn’t work for files with non-repeating content, or single files only sent once. Heitman pointed to Aspera’s FASP transfer technology which allows transfers at the fastest speed a user’s bandwidth can manage at a sustained level. FASP supports huge files sizes (500GB+) with the same ease as millions of small files. FASP transfer also operates with the same transfer speed regardless of distance.
//SESSION Overcoming the technical challenges of content processing, distribution and delivery with cloud-based workflows //SPEAKER Richard Heitmann, vice president, worldwide marketing, Aspera
MEDIATECH 360 17
Day One
IMF IN THE
REAL WORLD With Netflix now only accepting content delivered in IMF files, it helps to know a bit about what IMF is and what promises it holds for the future. David Abel of Tedial, gave an overview at MediaTech 360’s first masterclass
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avid Abel opened the MediaTech 360 masterclasses with a presentation on IMF, or Interoperable Mastering Format, and the asset management that Tedial provides for end-to-end workflows. SMPTE created IMF out of the need for a standard file format that was capable of simplifying the distribution of the huge variety of versions now required for any given piece of content. IMF allows businesses to automate many of the processes and complexity that are inherent in delivering content to multiple platforms. The IMF format has come into its own as non-linear viewing has mushroomed. “The bottom line around all the choices about standards is cost,” said Abel, Tedial’s sales director. “Businesses want to produce more for less, and consumers want to pay less. It’s also about agility and scaleability, and businesses have to find a balance between the cost of scaling the business and the cost of producing volumes that you need to get a return on that investment. “Generally, businesses that work in this space are factory-type environments,” explained Abel. “They’re churning out thousands of files to multiple customers in multiple destinations. And if you make an error, the cost of correction is quite high. If that production lines stops, there is a knock-on effect.”
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NETFLIX REQUIREMENTS As usual, the conversation found its way to Netflix. Abel pointed out that Netflix is currently the biggest consumer of content, and Netflix has said it will only accept IMF packaged content. A major part of Netflix’s global strategy is regionalisation, which the IMF format greatly simplifies. For Netflix to produce multiple versions in multiple languages, often in different edits, depending on a region’s regulations, would be crippling in time and money without something like IMF. SMPTE had originally developed IMF at the behest of the big US studios. The studios didn’t want to continue spending money on producing myriad versions of content for all their customers. Now many service providers are looking at IMF and the benefits it offers as a means of differentiating themselves. NON-LINEAR IS THE NORM “At Tedial we don’t differentiate between the linear and the non-linear world,” said Abel, highlighting Tedial’s MAM solutions for the modern media factory. “There are a lot of businesses that use the IMF standard, but only seem to have ‘IMF-ish’ kinds of workflows. For Tedial, having adopted IMF from beginning to end, we can do all the elements from beginning to end in one workflow. “A lot of people still can’t get their heads around non-linear. They still think it’s
“The rationale for investment in something like this is not so much about technology, it’s about business strategy” DAVID ABEL
something on the side or an afterthought, whereas studies show that the growth of linear is flat, and non-linear is on the up. Sometimes when we talk to people, we’re a bit mystified as to why they’re not taking this more seriously. Abel notes that everything Tedial does now is virtualised, and that for them, the era of hardware is fading fast. “The cloud is now just another platform. There’s probably only one system that we’ve installed in the last two years that has been on physical hardware, and the only reason for that was because, by law the customer was required to have everything on premises. They weren’t allow to externalise any of their infrastructure.
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“The rationale for investment in something like this is not so much about technology, it’s about business strategy,” Abel continued. “Until you know precisely what it is you’re attempting to do, it’s difficult to quantify the value of the different technologies in front of you. Because of this, when we talk to people, we try to make it a business discussion, rather than one about technology.” One last bit of useful information from David Abel’s presentation, which corrected a mistake I’d been making for years: his company name is pronounced: “Te-di-AL”, although IMF format could allow for multiple pronunciations, depending on the region.
//SESSION Masterclass: IMF end-to-end workflow //SPEAKER David Abel, sales director, Tedial
MEDIATECH 360 19
Day One
CHANGING TECH CHANGING MINDS Phil Myers is responsible for all the IP-based products at SAM which, as he pointed out, is a substantial remit, because SAM’s goal is to incorporate IP into every one of its technologies
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arlier this year SAM (Snell Advanced Media) published it’s Global IP Barometer on NewBay Connect, the industry’s online library of technical white papers. Myers opened the IP masterclass with a look at the IP Barometer’s results. In partnership with NewBay, SAM sent out its survey to NewBay’s worldwide database. The results suggested that in the US and Europe, companies are generally ready to move to IP, with the Asia Pacific regions lagging behind somewhat, and that those thinking of making the move were looking at doing so over the next two years. Myers pointed out that in the APAC countries there is also a lot of competing interest in 12G-SDI technology. What were the main drivers for wanting to make the SDI to IP switch? At the top were improving flexibility and reducing infrastructure, and companies were looking at moving their live production infrastructure first. “Playout has been doing IP for a quite a while,” Myers pointed out. “There has been quite a big shift into virtualisation services, but up till now there has been very little connectivity to the wider infrastructure.” However, switching to IP technology will require a staff who knows what to do with it. Training existing engineers, or bringing in new contractors, to work in the new paradigm is one of the most important issues facing companies making the change. Myers emphasised that the key driver in the development of IP solutions for broadcasters is standards.
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“If you were to go back two years ago before the creation of AIMS (Alliance for IP Media Solutions), we had vendors all doing their own thing, because they all wanted to get to an IP solution. Obviously as an industry that’s not a good thing. One of the reasons why AIMS (SAM was one of AIMS’ founding members) was formulated was to give our customers a clear direction about where this technology was going to go.” TIMELINE’S IP OB TRUCK The masterclass went into some detail on the building of Timeline’s new IP OB truck, UHD2. Richard Bills of Blue Meow was brought in by Timeline to be the project manager on the build. In 2015, Timeline build UHD1. Billed as Europe’s first purpose-built UHD OB truck, the van was stuffed full of cable, UHD necessitating four SDI cables for every signal. With the plans for UHD2 being even more ambitious, IP was the only reasonable way to go. “There was a lot of wire in UHD1,” said Bills. “The project requirements for UHD2 are for 32 UHD cameras and 12 UHD replay servers and we wanted to do it all uncompressed IP. Even in the biggest triple-expander, doing all that with copper is completely unrealistic.” As an OB truck, UHD2 needs to connect to a lot of people. “We need to be able to take all sorts of signals in. At the moment, it’s pretty much SDI for everyone else, but that’s going to change and we’re going to have to be able to take whatever people throw at us. We felt with an IP system like this was future-proofed,” Bills said.
“Five or ten years down the line, the need for having a base station or connectivity will probably go away” PHIL MYERS
A lot of SAM equipment was used in the build of the truck, including audio. “Whereas a studio will often carry out the same sorts of programmes on a schedule, we do a different thing every day, and every show is different. Having this flexibility of configuration gives a huge benefit. For instance, we could connect it to another truck. Traditionally, you would have to have a lot of spare I/O for this, but now we just run out some fibre with some edge devices and to the other truck. “We can start to look at the ways we operate, beyond just the cost and weight aspects.” LOOKING AHEAD SAM’s Myers looked ahead towards some of the other benefits of IP that are beginning to reveal themselves. “One benefits of IP is your tools for monitoring the system are actually greater
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than they are in the SDI world,” he said. “You still need the SDI monitoring, because you need to monitor signals, but to be able to interrogate devices in the network is a lot easier in the IP world. “We’re also going to see less hardware as we go into the future. IP is going to allow you to design buildings and trucks more flexibly and to design new workflows. I don’t think in the short term you’re going to see a huge reduction in the amount of equipment, because as we are moving into IP, we’re also moving the goal posts. We’re also trying to do UHD, HDR and high frame rate. And we’re also talking about 8K and beyond. We’re going to need more hardware to do this as well.” Myers concluded: “But my personal opinion is that five or ten years down the line, the need for having a base station or connectivity will probably go away and you’ll be able to connect the camera right to the switch.”
//SESSION IP Masterclass – exclusive insights from studio and OB truck deployments //SPEAKERS Phil Myers - IP product manager, Snell Advanced Media (SAM) Richard Bills - system design engineer, Blue Meow (Broadcast)
MEDIATECH 360 21
AND THE WINNER IS… A full list of the nominees and winners of this year’s TVBAwards for outstanding technical achievements in the broadcast industry
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he 2017 TVBAwards quickly followed a successful Day One at the Millennium Mayfair Hotel on 7th June. The fourth annual ceremony celebrated the various success stories in our industry, as we recognise and reward those pushing the boundaries in the production, management, and delivery of today’s media content. Naomi Climer, former president of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, received the marquee Lifetime Achievement honour, becoming the first woman to receive the award. “I’m really thrilled to receive this award.” Climer said. “It’s such an honour. It was really wonderful to recall the highlights of my career, and it’s been great to see so many familiar faces.” Dejero and Pilgrim Media Group were presented with the Achievement in Live Production award for their work with The Runner, while Technicolor won the award for Achievement in Post Production for the part it played in the delivery of Victoria. ATP Media was presented with the Overall Broadcast Production award for its ATP World Tour, with Open Broadcast Systems winning the Rising Star Award. Last but not least, Timeline Television took the Innovation and R&D Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement for its multi-million pound IP 4K, with simultaneous HDR, outside broadcast vehicle.
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Naomi Climer was crowned the first female Lifetime Achievement award winner
//ACHIEVEMENT IN LIVE PRODUCTION Winner – Dejero and Pilgrim Media Group: The Runner – Cinevideo and Sky Italia: simulcast UHD and HD production using I-MOVIX UHD Infinite for the Serie A football game between Juventus and AC Milan – Fox Sports and Avid: Super Bowl LI – LiveU and ITN: 18-location live advert for Virgin Holidays – Mobile Viewpoint and VRT: live broadcast of the ‘Voor de Ronde’, the pre-tour event for the Tour of Flanders //ACHIEVEMENT IN POST PRODUCTION Winner – Technicolor: Victoria – Avid: Ha-Mitchem installation – dock10 post production: The Fighter – dock10 post production: The Worst Witch //OVERALL BROADCAST PRODUCTION AWARD Winner – ATP Media: ATP World Tour – Dejero and Pilgrim Media Group: The Runner – Insight TV and Extreme Video: Masters of the Dirt – Riedel Communications: MediorNet decentralised and redundant signal routing for Spain’s Gran Hermano VIP (Big Brother VIP) – Shine TV and Canon: The Hunted //INNOVATION AND R&D AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT Winner – Timeline Television’s multimillion pound IP 4K, with simultaneous HDR, outside broadcast vehicle – Harmonic: EyeQ real-time video compression solution – Massive Interactive: Massive Axis – Ross Video: ACID camera range – Sky Vehicle Technology – SoftAtHome: Video 360 //RISING STAR AWARD Winner – Open Broadcast Systems – Massimo Bertolotti, head of innovation, Sky Italia – TV Player – V-Nova Ltd – x.news Information Technology The full complement of TVBAwards 2017 winners
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//LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT Winner – Naomi Climer
MEDIATECH 360 23
Day Two
TECH TRENDS HOT OR NOT? C
haired by Virtual AI CMO Niall Duffy, Day Two focused on various areas of business transformation throughout the broadcast and media industry. Delivering the opening address, Duffy said: “What we have to understand is whether this industry change is metamorphous – are we leaving the old ways behind and becoming something beautiful – or are we just enhancing? He shortly handed over to Jon Watts, managing partner and co-founder, MTM, to moderate the first panel of the day: Hot or not – top tech trends through to 2022. Watts was joined by; Peter Sellar, associate director, broadcast, DTG; Louise Rice, chief executive, amphio.co; Neil Berry, vice president and managing director, international, Comcast Technology Solutions; and Tom Griffiths, director of broadcast and distribution technology, ITV. THE RIGHT USE CASE Kicking off proceedings with an overview of the speed and velocity of the broadcast industry, Sellar said: “I don’t think technology changes as fast as we think. Even when we come up with a new technology, we’re waiting for 18-24 months for them to come into the market, and then longer for end-users and consumers to use them, at least widely.” “We talk about VR, UHD, etc, and we’ve been talking about them for quite a few years and they’re only really coming to fruition now. UHD is the perfect example. It’s been a stepchange – we’ve added things like HDR and wide colour gamut piece by piece. “I don’t think we need to worry too much about that; you can generally see these changes coming.”
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Berry chimed in: “I would say the change in tech is accelerating, not decelerating. We’re all changing the way that we consume and behave around content, and that’s really what’s driving the change. “Technologies like AR and VR are all about the right use case and building a business model around it.” But what are the challenges involved in that ‘right use case’? Griffiths said: “There are so many opportunities with various new technologies that it’s difficult not to get distracted. “At ITV, we try not to get technology for technology’s sake and ensure that it’s part of our strategy, and is beneficial to drive our business forward.” JUMPING IN TOO EARLY Berry alluded to 3D as a classic example of acting too fast: “Many TV manufacturers have now discontinued 3D televisions, after it was such a hype in the past. “We thought it was really cool – much like AR now, but in this case, there was no market for it. There was nothing really to drive viewers and subscribers.” HOT OR NOT? The conversation moved on to the ‘hot or not’ section of the discussion, where panellists were given various technologies and asked whether they consider them – you guessed it – hot or not. ON IP NETWORKING AND CONTENT DELIVERY Sellar: “IP’s here, everyone is using it, it’s fantastic of course, but it’s cooling.” Rice: “It’s opened up this massive library of content and enabling people to get out there, so it’s still hot.”
““I don’t think technology changes as fast as we think” PETER SELLAR
Berry: “This ship has sailed, so I wouldn’t say it’s hot. It’s kind of standard now and it’s what people expect.” Griffiths: “It’s still hot in the production space. In content delivery, it’s old news.”
Griffiths: “Very hot – there’s no debate about it at ITV – it unlocks brand new business opportunities in terms of content delivery, but it will still take a little while for some companies to get there as there are costs involved.”
ON CLOUD-BASED SOLUTIONS AND VIRTUALISATION FOR MEDIA AGGREGATION AND DISTRIBUTION Sellar: “It’s hot, people are moving into it. From an OTT perspective you want to be able to scale, and cloud offers that. All broadcasters and platforms are thinking in the same way – they may not have done it yet, but they’re all moving in the same direction.” Berry: “Everything needs to be totally scalable in this day and age – now that cloud services are being heavily standardised, it’s now allowing linear and OTT to be made available in the same place.”
AND, FINALLY, ON THE POTENTIAL EFFECTS OF AI AND MACHINE LEARNING ON THE MEDIA MARKET Sellar: ”A specific one I’ve seen is a technology where you could automwate the tracking of whether something is being streamed legally or illegally. That’s a very interesting one considering the current issues and discussions surrounding services such as Kodi.” Griffiths: “It’s still at an experimental stage, so it’s not hot just yet, but it’s certainly warming up. We’re looking at it – machine learning more than AI. We’re investigating applications – it’s finding those killer apps for it that really work.”
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//SESSION Hot or not – top tech trends through to 2022. //MODERATOR Jon Watts, managing partner and co-founder, MTM //SPEAKERS Peter Sellar, associate director, broadcast, DTG Louise Rice, chief executive, amphio.co Neil Berry, vice president and managing director, international, Comcast Technology Solutions Tom Griffiths, director of broadcast and distribution technology, ITV
MEDIATECH 360 25
Day Two
BEWARE THE INTELLIGENT
MACHINE C
haired by Niall Duffy, chief marketing officer at Virtual AI, this session posed the question, what does AI mean for broadcast? As the new technology becomes more prevalent in areas such as scheduling, Duffy asked three key industry figures how they think AI will impact broadcasters in the near future, and what are the pitfalls of the new technology. Duffy began the panel by admitting most people are aware of artificial intelligence thanks to the likes of Hal in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, where bots “suck up information from the internet and then wreak havoc.” “AI is really about scaling people by augmenting systems and processes with a human level of intelligence,” he explained. “On the left-hand side, the functions are all about replacing and enhancing human activities, about engaging with machines through speech, or allowing us to do carry out tasks that are difficult or impractical. In terms of the outcome of that, it is about reducing costs, it’s about delivering better experiences, being able to plan better, faster and cheaper and actually going forward it’s going to be about improving our interaction with the internet of things.” One of the biggest issues creative people have with AI is that they believe machines will challenge creative efforts explained Dominic Stone, media industry executive, business development cloud object storage, IBM Europe. “I think that the task of media professionals is to constantly try to stay ahead of that game. We not only have to stay ahead of the machines, but we have to stay ahead of our audience because these machines are available in the homes,” he explained.
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“The basic point of about this is whether you can produce AI simply through data or whether you have to look for understanding beneath it. And as media professionals that’s very fundamental because what we’re looking for is some creative message – we’re trying to come up with something that actually stimulates thought as well as reflects facts around us. AI to me has an important value in trying to make experts more expert in terms of being able to filter the noise in the communication process. As media professionals, we have to be creative. Creativity requires a spark of understanding and interpretation in the world that requires generally new things. AI is a huge enhancer to that process, but doesn’t, in my view, necessarily replace it.” Martyn Whistler, lead analyst, media and entertainment, Ernst & Young, agreed that there is a fear of AI among creative talent working in the industry. “Everyone talks about how AI will take over creativity and you’re absolutely right,” he told the audience. “AI is about taking everything we know and creating a new version of what we know that sits within the safety of that realm.” “The danger of AI is that it will end up doing all the interesting things and leaving us poor humans doing all the dull things,” said Stone. “I think it’s a danger and it’s important that we turn it around so it doesn’t happen. A lot of what we do is actually process bound and the trick is to assign as much as possible the process to the intelligent machine and try to keep the creative stuff for the people, and it’s often difficult to distinguish between the two.” “You have to be very careful about the way it’s perceived by the people who are going to use the tech and the people who see themselves as
“We not only have to stay ahead of the machines, but we have to stay ahead of our audience” DOMINIC STONE
being replaced by it,” continued Stone. “When we first introduced presentation automation, at that time operators would sit there with a stop watch waiting for an ad queue to roll the commercial break. And it’s difficult to do. There was a great deal of satisfaction getting the timing right, and producing a nice smooth transition. When you got it right you felt good. The fact that it could be automated in a blink was really alarming to people who had spent years perfecting that fluidity. Their reaction wasn’t that a machine could do it better and it’s okay; their reaction was ‘the machine cannot possibly be doing it more effieciently than me’. It was an extremely difficult argument to counter.
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“AI is that it is threatening and we have to make sure that we show that it’s adding value to creative people, not taking away the creative bits of them,” Stone warned. “The example with legal contracts – 18 months ago we were demonstrating that with Watson where we ingested a 200-page contract and I had fun asking it questions, asking it if we had the rights to play this film in Botswana. Watson said that we did, but we didn’t have underlying rights and can’t market t-shirts and coffee cups. There was a lawyer with me who said that it wouldn’t do me out of a job, but it was doing the dull bits that he had spent weeks going through and leaves me to do the interesting bits.”
//SESSION What does AI mean for broadcast? //MODERATOR Niall Duffy, chief marketing officer, Virtual AI //SPEAKERS Steve Sharman – director, Hackthorn Innovation Martyn Whistler – lead analyst, media and entertainment, Ernst & Young Dominic Stone – media industry executive, business development cloud object storage, IBM Europe
MEDIATECH 360 27
Day Two
BROADCAST
+ TECHNOLOGY
= GREAT CONTENT DISRUPTORS
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he afternoon of Day Two kicked off with a discussion about the future of broadcast TV and the role tech companies are finding for themselves within the broadcast sector. Niall Duffy was in the moderator’s chair to discuss ‘TV is not dead; it is reborn’ alongside Richard Welsh, CEO, Sundog Media Toolkit; DPP MD Mark Harrison; and Justin Gupta, head of UK broadcast and entertainment, Google. He began by asking if we’re in a golden age of content. Google’s Gupta vehemently agreed. “Without question,” he said. “The fact that anybody can be a broadcaster is pushing up the quality of content. More people are getting into content creation earlier in their careers and there is more content available. It’s so easy for people now to switch to another content source, be that linear or catch-up. I think it’s a great time to be a TV viewer.” Welsh agreed as well, explaining that there is a line of thought that the explosion of content creators could have meant a decrease in the quality of content available. “What’s happening is that it’s made the audience more discerning,” he said. “They will go and seek stuff that they’re interested in. Kids will go and look for Minecraft videos which you can’t get on BBC One. But audiences also appreciate good production values more because they see all the crap you get if you don’t have that.”
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Harrison said the rise in the ‘disruptors’ means that traditional broadcasters could see their talent pool begin to shrink, sooner rather than later. He stated that if he was starting out as a producer today, “it would not remotely occur to me to do it for a broadcaster in an in-house production department because I wouldn’t have to. On the one hand, it’s fantastic that really strong creative people can find a way of getting their content out there through the likes of YouTube, but on the other an interesting question for broadcasters that have in-house departments is are they still going to get the best talent in a couple of years?” The discussion then moved on to the impact some of the tech companies have had on the broadcast sector in recent years, with Duffy citing one theory that Game of Thrones wouldn’t exist without YouTube. “I’m not quite sure I completely agree.” said Welsh. “YouTube started to have a serious impact on broadcast television in around 20102012. Game of Thrones piloted in 2009 and as we know, a good story is what makes a really good show. It may be argued that if you’ve got that good story in hand you can probably get that out on YouTube with minimal production value and still get a really big audience, but it wasn’t driven at that time by a desire to compete with something on the internet.”
“What’s to stop ITV going and fighting Netflix on their own territory?” JUSTIN GUPTA
So, how do you get commissioned by the likes of Netflix and Amazon? Welsh explained it is not an easy feat. “Netflix is like an ivory tower in terms of commissioning. It’s like GCHQ, you can look at the outside but you can’t get in. “It’s the opposite with Amazon. You can all log in right now and put your script into it’s portal. If they like it, they pay you immediately for the script and they go and make a pilot. If it’s successful, they pay you again and you’ll continue to get cuts as it goes along. That is the democratisation, those two companies doing similar original content with very different approaches to how they garner that content.” Gupta said he sees some online platforms as an excellent way of testing the waters with new content. “You can use online platforms to see what gets engagement and then see if that is a launch pad to start commissioning,” he explained. “I think the challenge for the commissioners of the existing broadcasters is to use these new technologies, approaches, platforms and tools in order to help you compete with these other guys. Because these other guys started off as inherently global and I think
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the challenge for the UK TV industry, which produces the highest quality TV in the world, is to use the fact that much of the world speaks English. What’s to stop ITV going and fighting Netflix on their own territory?” Finally, the discussion moved onto where a tech giant can carve out a role for itself within the industry. Google’s Gupta said he sees partnering as a key aspect of how companies can take advantage of these new technologies without having to build inhouse or making acquisitions. “I think many of the tech giants, such as Google, bring a lot of services which can help the broadcast industry. There are definitely situations where we both co-operate and compete. It’s not like the tech giants have suddenly jumped in to the broadcast space – TV has moved into the digital space. The tech giants understand digital, this is where they build their businesses, their cloud systems which they use to run their own systems can now be purposed for media. Definitely what I see is we are learning more how to work with the broadcast industry and where our technology can help around advertising or cloud or distribution.”
//SESSION TV is not dead; it is reborn //MODERATOR Niall Duffy, chief marketing officer, Virtual AI //SPEAKERS Richard Welsh, CEO, Sundog Media Toolkit Mark Harrison, managing director, Digital Production Partnership (DPP) Justin Gupta, head of UK broadcast and entertainment, Google
MEDIATECH 360 29
Day Two
EXPANDING A VIBRANT TV
ECOLOGY B
roadcast as we know it has gone through major changes in recent years, from the rise of IP to the use of the small screen by viewers on their daily commute. The Beyond Broadcast panel posed the question, as viewers become more savvy with their screen time, and not TV time, how has the industry adapted? Keith Underwood, director of strategy and technology at Channel 4, kicked things off by explaining the broadcaster’s response. “We’ve enabled our VoD platform to be available on all devices that consumers want it, so we’re supporting 26 different platforms with different player technologies,” he said. “We’ve done that so consumers can consume the content whenever they want and where. The important thing to mention is when you look at viewers, the vast majority of their time still is with big screen and that’s because the TV experience is phenomenal and it’s gotten better and better over the last few years. Pixel rate, sound, better opening, and the experience has become better. That’s why on average people are still consuming about 3.5 hours a day of TV content. That’s down only three or four minutes on what it was ten years ago.” YouView’s Richard Halton agreed that viewers still like some parts of a traditional linear schedule, for reliability if nothing else. “Tuning into BBC One and relying on the big piece of drama at 9pm on a Sunday night turns out to be quite a good way of finding and discovering content.”
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However, while there will always be viewers who stick to a linear schedule, it’s up to the industry to find innovative ways to serve that to them. “Platforms like ours should be capable of finding out who is in the room. You should be able to pair up your mobile to your set-top box, which would then know you’re within a certain distance to that device, provide personalised recommendations and be conscious of providing people with new content,” explained Halton. “The most traditional behaviours we see continuing pose the most interesting challenges in finding new techniques and technologies, and that’s something we’re really fascinated in exploring.” Underwood agreed, “It’s not just about the content, it’s about the evolution of the products and services that people have opted in to as well,” he told the audience. “They’re content hubs where you’ve got catch-up, live television, a wide variety of box. Now we’re in the situation at Channel 4 with our on-demand service, only about 50 per cent of the views are actually catch-up. The remaining 50 per cent are a combination of different things – box sets, live channels, etc.” Another big change for the broadcast landscape has been the rise of social media – not just as disruptors in the broadcast space but also as a way to market content. Jean-Louis Lods, director of business development at DMC, said broadcasters need to get used to delivering more content in different versions in order to support a social
“It’s unquestionable that we need more regulation in terms of the content social media platforms are putting out” KEITH UNDERWOOD
media presence. “It’s predominantly driving the interaction with the consumer at the end of the road,” Lods said. “How the broadcaster, particularly multi-channel European distribution, have got to think is how do they make interaction into the different countries into sometimes single feeds. And that’s why social media does mean they can interact in different ways, from one general feed per territory.” Finally, the panel discussed the issue of regulation: if more content is being made available on more platforms (such as Facebook and Twitter), how is it regulated? “I think the regulation that we have around TV, specifically around the public service broadcasters, has led to a real vibrant TV
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ecology here at the moment,” said Channel 4’s Underwood. “I think it will be a travesty if we look to dismantle that in order for us to compete with social media platforms. I think we are competing at the moment very effectively with differentiated quality content. That said, although I acknowledge that it is difficult, I think it’s unquestionable that we do need more regulation in terms of the content social media platforms are putting out. “I think they have to acknowledge responsibility in being content owners and publishers, and I think we have to find a framework within which they can operate. I would also say there’s scope for regulation to go a bit further.”
//SESSION Beyond Broadcast – what are the strategies? //MODERATOR Niall Duffy, chief marketing officer, Virtual AI //SPEAKERS Keith Underwood, director of strategy and technology, Channel 4 Richard Halton, chief executive, YouView Jean-Louis Lods, director of business development, DMC
MEDIATECH 360 31
Day Two
SHINY NEW
TOYS T
he final panel of MediaTech 360 looked at the operational challenges currently facing the market. Topics ranged from the rise of mixed reality to the problem of diversity within the sector. Panel moderator Niall Duffy described what he called “the shiny new toy syndrome” where executives had visited NAB and found themselves caught up with the latest technology, something Steve Plunkett, chief technology officer at Ericsson Broadcast and Media agreed with. “AR, VR, AI... whole teams of twoletter acronyms seemed to be the talk of the show,” he said. “I think an organisation like ourselves, we have to be aware of what those technologies can enable and what new services they can provide, we act on our own behalf and on behalf of the clients, so they will expect that we come back with a view on how ready any of the technology is for mainstream, high-production service level TV channel and how the more diverse technologies can help enable new things.” BT Sport’s chief operating officer Jamie Hindhaugh explained that for his company, the rise of new technologies is driven by the story the broadcaster wants to tell. “We have a clear strategy at BT Sport which is to be at the heart of sport, so best pictures brings you close to the action, best sound brings atmosphere into your house so you can feel you are part of the action. You can come back to all the shiny new toys you want; if they don’t fit into our editorial strategy then I don’t look at them. “Our philosophy is about what we allow technology to do, it’s not what technology allows us to do,” Hindhaugh continued. “There’s a real slight twist, but it’s really important that you do what is editorially right for your audiences,
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and their viewing experience, not just because you can.” UKTV has recently moved into broadcasting sport, having aired David Haye’s comeback fight, the Darts World Trophy and Tie Break Tens tennis. The broadcaster’s chief technology and operations officer Sinead Greenaway explained that because the viewer isn’t used to seeing sport as part of the UKTV portfolio, it’s given them room to try new things. “Because we’re a free operator our viewer’s expectations aren’t to the levels of BT Sport’s, so it’s given space to do something unique to us in our voice. It’s great for us to do that,” she explained. “Is it stable over the long-term? Clearly, we’ll have a business case and that would mature for us if that became a strategy, but actually it’s been about trial. That’s where we’re at our best in innovation terms as a business.” One of the biggest operational challenges facing the broadcast industry is the lack of diversity and the so-called ‘skills crisis’. Duffy asked the panel if it is a genuine issue. Matthew Huntingon, chief technology officer at Freesat said that for him, reliability is key. “I want broadcast guys who know what it is to be reliable. You don’t decide on a Friday afternoon to put something live and then worry about it on Monday. “You have blackout times and really we’re dealing with standards that go to millions of consumers, and they expect television to always be there. They have low tolerance. At the same time, you need to be agile and know how to use this cloud technology. I get people that come from both sides but very rarely do I find someone that will fit in the middle and do both for me. They’ve got to live between the two these days.”
“We really need to work on the diversity gene pool” SINEAD GREENAWAY
“Our structure has been more about growing our own and thinking about potential and how we can move that around the business,” said UKTV’s Greenaway. “We’re a business that you can get your arms around so then you can move operational teams into testing and digital into engineering. That works for us as it’s fresh eyes. We really need to work on the diversity gene pool. It’s just mixing it up and getting some females, other nationalities, making sure we work to one goal. “There are lots of people who have promise, and it’s about taking risks.”
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//SESSION Operational challenges in the market //MODERATOR Niall Duffy, chief marketing officer, Virtual AI //SPEAKERS Jamie Hindhaugh, chief operating officer, BT Sport Steve Plunkett, chief technology officer, Ericsson Broadcast and Media Sinead Greenaway, chief technology and operations officer, UKTV Matthew Huntingon, chief technology officer, Freesat
MEDIATECH 360 33
Masterclass
EVOLVING REALITIES In association with BVE, MediaTech 360’s VR storytelling session was a brainstorm on making and delivering virtual reality content
V
R is something everyone is talking about, but no one seems to know quite what to do with. In partnership with BVE, MediaTech 360 convened a masterclass in the latest tools and innovations in VR and 360-degree storytelling. On the panel were Seamus Masterson, executive creative director, Reality Labs: London; Ashley Cowan, chief executive and co-founder of VR City and East City Films; Muki Kulhan, executive digital producer for Muki International; and Arnaud Baernhoft, senior VR producer, Visualise. The panel of seasoned VR professionals (if there is such a thing in such a new medium) was moderated by TV Tech Global editor Neal Romanek. What was clear throughout the discussion was how much of a Wild West VR and 360-degree production is. Even the terms we used to describe it are sometimes amorphous and conflicting. Virtual reality can mean anything from 360-degree video to a fully immersive, goggles-and-headset (with haptic and olfactory feedback) experience. And does Pokemon Go count as augmented reality or does augmented reality have to be something that appears in our living room on a daily basis, courtesy of specially designed contact lenses? Muki Kulhan has been working in VR for as long as VR has been a thing. And she was quick to point out how much of VR is still about experimentation.
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Kulhan was brought on to produce VR content for The Voice, which was pretty much just a brief and stack of GoPros. She said her motto is: “When life gives you lemons, it’s time to break out the tequila and have a party.” The high-tech VR rig which Kulhan used to provide a full 360-degree experience of what it was like to audition for the voice and meet will.i.am ended being the GoPros attached to hard-hat with zip ties. On for no-frills VR, done way, way back in the dark ages of 2016, it’s quite effective (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ articles/1QBFmxQ6gQCb3fxGrXbVwrl/360virtual-audition). Not only is VR technology and how to use it still in development, the very rules and conventions of how to tell a story in VR are still in their embryonic stages. Again, experimentation rules the day. Ashley Cowan of VR City described developing a piece around a woman who survived the London’s 7/7 bombings. “Why VR? For us it was about figuring out a way that being immersed entirely can help you explain her emotional journey; what she has felt and what she has experienced. So we just started to play with the senses, to play with imagination, to play with what she said to create this immersive experience which we hope will give you a better understanding of her experience or of people who have gone through a similar event.”
“VR is massively different from how it was two years ago” MUKI KULHAN
On the basis of that piece, Cowan’s team won a commission from the Sheffield Doc Fest to make a film about the indefinite detention system in the UK. It’s clear that VR, in the right hands, is a very powerful vehicle for delivering a message. However, VR offers a wide range of opportunities well beyond simply a novel way of using sounds and images. Interactivity, which can come in a wide variety of forms, can be a key element in distinguishing a VR experience from just a more immersive, but still very traditional narrative. “You can use some of the film concepts we have as a base. But using interactivity, even on a very basic level, really helps out,” said Seamus Masterson of Reality Labs. “During 2016, I created a piece where two people were fighting, and the story would change based on who you
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spent more time focusing on. You could start to change the narrative, adapting it to make it more like actual reality. With projoects that are fully interactive, you might have worlds where scenes and environments change depending on the aspects of the story the user is most interested in. “In fully interactive experiences, you can go into that environment and there’ll always be a good story. It will be tailored to you want it to be, unconsciously.” Muki Kulhan summed up the accelerating pace of the developing technology: “It’s different now from what it was six months ago, and massively different from how it was two years ago.” And where does Kulhan think we will be three years from now? “In a pub, still talking about it.”
//SESSION Immersive storytelling – is the broadcast future a mixed reality? //MODERATOR Neal Romanek, editor, TV Tech Global //SPEAKERS Seamus Masterson, executive creative director, Reality Labs: London Ashley Cowan, CEO and co-founder, VR City and East City Films Mulki Kulham, executive digital producer Muki International Arnaud Baernhoft, senior VR producer, Visualise
MEDIATECH 360 35
Masterclass
THE VARIOUS
FLAVOURS
OF HDR Peter Sykes, strategic technology development manager at Sony, gave an overview of Sony’s HDR solutions and where high dynamic range technology is right now
T
here seems to be a consensus that 4K and high dynamic range are the next step in video distribution. Cameras that do not capture in 4K with a wide colour gamut are increasingly thin on the ground. Sony have been helping to push along the new 4K/HDR paradigm and Sony’s Peter Sykes offered MediaTech 360 on technologies for capturing 4K and HDR images and how to get the most out of them. Sykes said that many of the conversations Sony is having with the industry now focus on media companies wanting to build their brand and presence. Sometimes this means buying or producing premium content to attract viewers. Sykes points out that simply changing its technology roadmap can give a media brand a substantial boost. HDR SETS SAIL Several years ago, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) issued ITU BT2020, a standard which included all the parameters needed for UHD television. It didn’t include a standard for high dynamic range. The ITU went back to work, and in summer 2016, it issued BT2100, which added the parameters for HDR. The ITU decided on two HDR formats, HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma) and PQ (Perceptual Quantizer). HLG is a “scene-referred” system
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representing the amount of light exposure on the set, while PQ is a display referred system, the output of which renders brightnesses on the screen. Sykes also mentioned S-Log3, which is Sony’s own high dynamic range curve which has had substantial use in production, including live sports. Typically, Sykes pointed out, the OTT television and high-end content industries prefer deliveries in PQ, while the HLG format is preferred by live broadcast. One reason broadcasters like HLG is it was designed with some backwards compatibility with existing services in mind and the transition from standard dynamic range to HDR will, if it occurs at all, be a gradual one. While theoretically, the two HDR flavours should exists side by side without any problems, questions were posed by Masterclass attendees about the difficulties of converting between the two. Sykes pointed to Sony’s conversion box, part of its SR Live for HDR Workflow, which is designed to overcome conversion problems and allow crew to work unencumbered by concerns about HDR standards. The Sony converter box could be a useful tool in delivering content to multiple outlets with multiple format requirements. A 4K HDR service using either HLG or PQ, a 4K SDR service and an HD SDR service can all be output simultaneously.
“Recently there has been a real permeation of HDR in entry level productions” PETER SYKES
But Sykes noted that new technologies must never interfere with the bread and butter of production: “What we find is that there’s one thing that people say very early on: Most of the money that we’re making is around high definition, standard dynamic range. You must not do anything to affect that performance or it’s a sea of pain.” NEW FRONTIERS Sykes noted that the most frequent HDR use cases have been sports and high-end scripted content, but he also pointed out that other applications are becoming increasingly viable, including small productions. “Recently there has been a real permeation of the technology in entry level productions – say with someone who wants to shoot a wedding video or corporate video.”
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Sony’s high end cameras have been capable of producing 4K HDR images for quite some time, but in response to the ever-growing need of smaller, niche users, the company is now offering HDR in some of its entry levels and products. HDR widens the toolset for creators across the moving image industries. Several large studios are already mastering with HDR in mind. Pixar is now working in HDR most of the time, only outputting standard dynamic range versions at the end of the pipeline. Sony has invested a lot in the future of 4K, and as a result is keen the industry up to speed on the technologies around it. Its Digital Motion Picture Centre Europe (DMPCE) at Pinewood Studios offers a wealth of training courses, as does the Sony website.
//SESSION An industry briefing looking at the latest developments in HDR //SPEAKER Peter Sykes, strategic technology development manager, Sony
MEDIATECH 360 37
Day Two
HOW WILL THE
CLOUD ISSUE
PLAY-OUT? M
ediaTech 360 kicked off with a roundtable hosted by Huawei to discuss a recent white paper it completed with Vodafone, looking at broadcast and the cloud. However, debate among the roundtable attendees soon turned to the possibility of IP being involved in playout. Sinead Greenaway, director of operations and technology at UKTV, told the other attendees: “Are we really still talking about this? I feel like we’ve already got a hugely mixed economy. All our digital based activity is IP. Our job is more about bringing the old engineering and ‘box’ world into this new world.” Greenaway said she felt that it’s not that broadcasters aren’t moving to IP, but that in fact they need to do more: “I think there will be two or three playout rounds of service delivery where ‘crown jewels’ stuff will still stay with SDI and will still be a boxed play instead of a virtualised playout play because that’s the people we are,” she said. “What I really want is agility and I want slickness in my operation and I think IP becomes the code for that, because it will encourage them to become software houses. That’s what our industry is really missing.” Is there room for smaller vendors in the playout space? Ciaran Doran, executive vice president, global sales and marketing, Pixel Power, said, “Recent channel-in-a-box scenarios have allowed for a much more level playing field in terms of smaller vendors accelerating because they don’t have the baggage to drop. It’s exactly the same in the broadcasting
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world, where you’ve got the likes of Google and Amazon and Netflix who are suddenly producing content that’s competing with the major companies.” Ian Valentine, principal consultant, TV products and strategy, Huawei then asked the assembled group if there was the possibility of a different playout model becoming available. “I think there’s a little bit of a mismatch in terms of development cycles and refresh cycles – we want to do things quickly, we want to get out on new platforms, new devices, build new things, but then we want to sweat it for as long as we possibly can,” said Tim Davis, ITV’s senior enterprise architect, technology. “There’s a real mismatch of needing agility and wanting to do things faster and therefore almost bringing it closer and working with partners to be more agile. But then once you’ve got it and it’s become a consumer proposition, you become reticent to change it. So fundamentally it works but it’s inefficient.” “It’s inefficient at the wrong end though, that’s the thing,” argued Greenaway. “As a consumer outcome it’s completely fine. What we end up with is the stuff that’s ugly economically, because it’s difficult workflows or multiple tasks.” Lawrence Windley, post production manager at BBC Sport, told the attendees about a point Duffy had raised at an earlier roundtable. “It’s about the sprint methodology,” he explained. “You get to something quite quickly but then after a few sprints you end up with something that either works, that we’ve
“The services that the BBC and ITV deliver to people’s lives are no more critical than their Facebook feed” TIM DAVIS
implemented and the audiences are using, but if we were to do it again we wouldn’t do it that way. And that’s the dilemma about the refresh cycle.” The roundtable then moved on to discussing how bound the cloud is to IP. ITV’s Davis said: “The services that the BBC and ITV deliver to people’s lives are no more critical than their Facebook feed,” he said. “Facebook has effectively its own private cloud, but Netflix is using AWS. They care as much about availability as we do. They still have to deliver critical services in real time. If it’s architected correctly I don’t see why we can’t deliver premium television channels from AWS.” Tim Bertioli, VP international operations, Vice Media, said he thinks a “hybrid position” is coming into play. “For example, most of our Viceland feeds are delivered via AWS, delivered by a vendor,” he explained. “All of the content is uploaded that way, it’s QC-ed, content from our commercial partners is also uploaded via AWS.
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We have our R128 audio normalisation that’s done in the cloud. But the playouts themselves are located at the Edge. So it’s that hybrid approach as to how much of a risk do we want to take?” “Customers tell us that driving out cost is a big factor for their operation and that increases in efficiency are equally, if not more important,” explained Peter Sykes, strategic technology development manager, Sony. “The days when discussion with media companies were just about hardware are over and today it’s much more about how they can grow their brand, improve workflows and connect with their audience.” Answering the final question as to whether vendors should get involved in providing service, Davis concluded: “Technology is great when it works. But when it goes wrong you want an experienced person there to recover it, interact with it, and make sure it delivers what it should be delivering.”
//MODERATOR Niall Duffy, CMO, Virtual AI, and MediaTech 360 Summit Day Two chairman //SPEAKERS Sinead Greenaway, director of operations and technology, UKTV Ciaran Doran, executive vice president, global sales and marketing, Pixel Power Ian Valentine, principal consultant, TV products and strategy, Huawei Tim Davis, ITV senior enterprise architect, technology Lawrence Windley, post production manager, BBC Sport Adam Peat, chief engineer, The Farm Group Tim Bertioli, vice president, international operations, Vice Media Peter Sykes, strategic technology development manager, Sony
MEDIATECH 360 39
Day Two
THAT’S A
WRAP! T
he inaugural MediaTech 360 summit was brought to its official conclusion by Russell Grute, managing partner of consultancy Broadcast Innovation, who moderated a closing panel discussion with a selection of key speakers from the two days. The session was filmed exclusively for distribution as a webinar in conjunction with partner Dell EMC, to act as a wrap up of the varying discussion points brought to life during the seminars. Grute sat with Dell EMC’s Tom Burns; Google’s Justin Gupta; Casper Choffat of NEP Worldwide; Sinead Greenaway of UKTV; and S&P Global’s Mohammed Hamza to pore over the agenda that took delegates through the construct of standardised models for IP interoperability, under the bonnet of the latest technologies transforming our industry, and inside the business models of the broadcasting community who are trying to make strategic sense of it all. To watch the webinar, please click here or on the image above. To bring a close to this official review of MediaTech 360, I’d like to extend our thanks and huge appreciation to the efforts and support of all of our partners and sponsors who have all helped to make this event the true independent forum of insight, analysis, and peer to peer learning it has grown to become. All of our partners are crucial stakeholders in the fabric of the summit, and we look forward to working with the industry once more in preparing a bigger and better 2018 event. From everyone at TVBEurope and NewBay: thank you!
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//SESSION MediaTech 360 closing webinar //MODERATOR Russell Grute, managing partner, Broadcast Innovation //SPEAKERS Justin Gupta, head of UK broadcast and entertainment, Google; Tom Burns, CTO, media and entertainment, Dell EMC; Casper Choffat, R&D manager and lead system architect, NEP Worldwide; Sinead Greenway, CTO, UKTV; Mohammed Hamza, senior analyst, media and communications, S&P Global Market Intelligence
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