Yesterday involved a quick in and out trip to Holland to visit Europe's largest TV tech show, IBC.
It's been a few years since I've been. In previous years I became frustrated with how slow the whole industry was in reacting to the changes around it and how old themes were constantly playing out.
I still believe that the industry is far behind where it needs to be in its outlook towards technology, but there has been progress. Gimmicks like 3D are fading into the rear view mirror and more practical technologies such as the new compression codec, HEVC and 4k transmission with its superb resolution are coming to the fore.
At the same time, what I regard to be the two major technical issues, asset management and rights, barely got a look in. It seems that production companies are still running down to PC World and bulk buying HDs - it is, after all, significantly cheaper than pro alternatives, and this is a problem. In most industries, the more you buy, the cheaper it gets, but this has not yet played out in the TV storage market, and even offline cloud solutions remain costly. (We're shortly going to put out a white paper suggesting some strategies around this).
My favourite development in the production side of the industry is the rise of the drones, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to whiz one at high speed around the canals of Amsterdam - knowing my co-ordination, probably no bad thing.
It's been a few years since I've been. In previous years I became frustrated with how slow the whole industry was in reacting to the changes around it and how old themes were constantly playing out.
I still believe that the industry is far behind where it needs to be in its outlook towards technology, but there has been progress. Gimmicks like 3D are fading into the rear view mirror and more practical technologies such as the new compression codec, HEVC and 4k transmission with its superb resolution are coming to the fore.
At the same time, what I regard to be the two major technical issues, asset management and rights, barely got a look in. It seems that production companies are still running down to PC World and bulk buying HDs - it is, after all, significantly cheaper than pro alternatives, and this is a problem. In most industries, the more you buy, the cheaper it gets, but this has not yet played out in the TV storage market, and even offline cloud solutions remain costly. (We're shortly going to put out a white paper suggesting some strategies around this).
My favourite development in the production side of the industry is the rise of the drones, but unfortunately I didn't get a chance to whiz one at high speed around the canals of Amsterdam - knowing my co-ordination, probably no bad thing.