theibcdaily
www.ibc.org Monday 10.09.2012
At the IBC Awards Ceremony last night tributes were paid to an institution which has led the industry for more than 80 years, and a new standard which will be the platform for developments yet to come. In contention for awards were home networking and remote production; a greenfield site and a new way of controlling a 50 year old sport; and vampires and ballroom dancing. The evening ended with a fresh look at the thrilling coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games. IBC’s highest award, the
International Honour for Excellence, went to the Science and Technical Research Laboratories of NHK. First established in 1930 in Tokyo, the labs have been involved in a staggering line of innovations, including colour television, HD, satellite broadcasting, the plasma display and many more. The international judging panel chose to give its Judges’ Prize to FIMS, the Framework for Interoperable Media Systems. This initiative, jointly promoted by AMWA and EBU, recognised the need for standardisation in file- based content exchange. It brought together not just all the vendors but many of the world’s leading broadcasters, too, in an initiative that will form a platform for inter-working in the future. Jean-Pierre Evain of EBU commented: “A few years ago I made a presentation at the IBC conference about service orientated architectures, and I would never have dreamed of results coming so fast to the market. The people who have
been working on FIMS have been excellent, and the industry is recognising this effort.” This year’s award for the Best
Conference Paper was also forward-looking. Christian Reichert of the Fraunhofer Institute accepted, on behalf of his co- authors, the prize for their paper which describes the algorithms required to convert stereoscopic 3D television into multichannel signals needed for autostereoscopic screens. Their work will, in due course, be implemented inside millions of television sets to bring glasses- free 3D to the home. The centrepiece of the evening, though, was the IBC Innovation Awards, which are unique in looking beyond technological innovations to the way they are implemented. The awards go to the broadcaster or media enterprise which has taken the best of new technology to solve a real creative or operational challenge. Winners of the hotly-contested content creation category were FX UK, Red Bee Media and Civolution, who worked on an iPad app which was synchronised to the television using audio watermarking, allowing the audience to time-shift a programme but still enjoy the added value.
In the content management category, American motorsport NASCAR prevailed. The racing series needed a way to give race officials instant replays of incidents and accidents from multiple angles. The answer came in a new application developed by technology partner Telestream.
The official newspaper of IBC IBC2012 honours innovations
IHFE recognises NHK contribution The International Honour for Excellence is the highest honour IBC bestows. This year it was made to a research body which, for more than 80 years, has been in the forefront of technology, a position it retains today. The Science and Technical
Accepting the IBC International Honour for Excellence from Peter Owen (far right), Chair of the IBC Council : L-R Dr Shuichi Fujisawa, head of the science and technology research laboratories; Keiichi Kubota, executive director general of engineering NHK; and Masayuki Matsumoto, president of NHK
Four projects made it to the shortlist of most innovative work in content delivery, but the award went to 4oD, the on-demand service from Britain’s Channel 4. Its witty video described how Kit Digital had built an app for the Microsoft Xbox and Kinect to allow viewers at home to use gestures and voice commands to find the programmes they want. Not only is it clever and fun, it has proved massively popular with consumers.
For the full details of the awards and contenders, see overleaf.
Glasses-free 3D takes conference honour Many feel that 3D in the home will only achieve mass popularity when we have stable pictures from different angles without glasses. While display manufacturers are actively working on their own solutions, inside the electronics there needs to be a way of converting the two channels of stereoscopic 3D to the five, 10 or
more channels needs for autostereoscopic displays. A team at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications Heinrich Hertz Institute has been working on this, and has developed a set of algorithms, which can be implemented in the sort of low-cost chip which can be incorporated into a mass-market product. A paper describing their work, by Christian Riechert, Frederik Zilly, Peter Kauff, Jens Güther and Ralf Schäfer, was presented yesterday afternoon, and last night it took the IBC Best Conference Paper Award. “This is a great honour for me and all my co-authors,” said Reichert, who collected the award on behalf of his colleagues. “Realtime conversion of stereo content to multiview for autostereoscopic displays is indeed a hot potato in the 3D community. It is a pleasure for a team of researchers like ours to be able to offer solutions to such a challenging task.”
Research Laboratories of Japanese national broadcaster NHK was formed in 1930. It was making trial broadcasts of television in 1939, and colour television in 1960. As early as 1964 it started work on HD, first by developing methods to determine human perceptions, work which continues to this day: last year’s IBC Best Conference Paper went to NHK STRL for the research behind Super Hi-Vision. Other achievements have included satellite broadcasting and the plasma display. It continues to innovate, not least with Super Hi- Vision which was in use at the London Olympic Games. IBC attendees can see some of that footage on a new full resolution display in the Future Zone in the Park Foyer near Hall 8.
Reflecting the importance of the
award, it was accepted by Masayuki Matsumoto, the president of NHK. He confirmed that the STRL will continue its pioneering work. “With a firm belief that broadcasting is a form of culture founded on technology, NHK will continue to commit itself to drawing on the latest achievements to create a new broadcasting culture,” he said.
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