RTS/IET IBC Review at IBM Southbank and a missing shoe

Well I thought I'd get my cards on the table with a bunch of letters- I'm a member of the IET and long term RTS supporter too.

[The IET is the Institute of Engineering and Technology and it means I can legitimately put IET after my name and the RTS is the Royal Television Society]

Nick at IBM prior to his chairing of the event.

Many times I've visited the IBC even as far back as Brighton days
[The IBC is the International Broadcast Convention an exhibition and convention around the Broadcast Industry held in Amsterdam every year].

The RTS London holds talks through the year and its programme starts in September generally with a review of developments observed by  attendees at the convention - This year the review was chaired by the Broadcast Journalist Nick Radlo.

Here's a quick run through of the contributors to the review and their contributions.

Let's start the show

Vali Lalioti was the first speaker, and I'd like to point out that she was well qualified to speak as both a technologist (PhD) and a businesswoman (MBA) who had attended the IBC.





Vali identified four products:

1) Holodeck (as seen in Star Trek she told us) this is something called Free viewpoint Television and was brought to us by Hideyoshi Horimai.

It's about other ways of experiencing TV the hope is that by 2016 for the next Olympics you'll be able to see the swimming events in the floor of your living room (a well immersive experience one would imagine).

2) Venue Explorer
This was a method of using the UHD (4K) type image capture to enable viewers to get more from the image - you can zoom in on a tablet or smartphone and get extra data too - It's a BBC initiative and Vali showed us some of her chat with Rebecca Gregory-Clarke of BBC R&D.

3) Antelope -Polecam -this was a high speed camera  (around 350 frames per second of capture) aimed at Sports coverage it can give instant replay showing what one might miss with normal capture , Steffan Hewitt was caught on camera (at normal rate) by Vali and spoke about how it was now able to be used underwater too. Interestingly the topic of co-operative working was brought up too.

4) Vahana VR
This was a development that a cameraman/skier  (and he's a mathematician too) had developed after seeing a need. His name was Nicolas Burtey and the 'product:  it's like the panorama/stitch you can apply on your digital stills photos only it's live and driven by 6 cameras to give you a 360 degree experience - this'll be a winner no doubt you can see an example here

Next up reviewing was David Austerberry who's a technical commentator he spoke about trends , the IP connected world which included Ericsson's acquisition of Mediaroom, the integration of the viewing experience across devices (which didn't seem to new to me), Cisco's connected life (creepy he said), he also highlighted the new focus on quality beyond just quantity in pixels exemplified by  ideas such as the Dolby High Dynamic range.
David mentioned too how LED lighting including that which uses  Quantum Dot Technology (very flexible)   is now very widely  adopted even in very traditional companies.

The third speaker was the RTS young technologist award winner Bobby Moss from BT,

Bobby was enthused by speakers he saw  including; Dr Brian Cox (who spoke about BBC and Public Service Broadcasting) and Matt Brittin  (of Google) who spoke about of course Youtube.
Bobby identified augmented reality as the aspect to watch in the future.

The final speaker on IBC review was Simon Gauntlet of DTG, Simon spoke about the UHD and Higher Frame rates but his clear message was that there was still a gap and work to be done around Search and Discovery -as media becomes more pervasive an effective application to find what we want and enabling us to easily manage it is pressing.

IBM - a new venue for RTS London

All in  all a very good evening which gave a great feel for the new (er) trends and products in Broadcast (and by the way- IBM thanks for the the chance to be in  the venue ).

Old Brown Shoe

Bit saddened to learn that some of our allotment sheds have again been broken into, I seem to have been spared this time unless it was a one legged thief .
My guess is though that a fox has (again) nicked one of my gardening shoes from the greenhouse.

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