July 2014
www.tvbeurope.com
TVBEurope 3 Editorial Power to the pixel? Contents
4 Content Everywhere News round up
ENCOURAGING James McKeown
The quality, rather than abundance of pixels on a screen forms the blueprint of the Ultra-HD movement, but content will always be king. Recollections, both, from our Beyond HD Masters conference in June, but should we be moving towards a more experiential future based on user preference?
INNOVATION is one thing, harnessing it is quite another (monetisation a whole different practice). We are not an industry shy of great minds — creators, thinkers, visionaries — and neither are we lacking of those who bring these visions to life — the builders, engineers and grafters. Like many industries, there exists a rich mix of heritage and modernity; the old hand of experience mixing with fresh-faced dynamism. The current challenge is to ensure that neither end of that spectrum becomes too detached from the other — that the future doesn’t expand too far away from the industry’s core and leave in its wake a hollow middle ground bereft of shared knowledge.
the UHD movement will lead us. But concerns prevail as to the effective application of technical advance if that advance is too far ahead of the consumer’s limits of affordability. Indeed, as Jack Wetherill’s Beyond HD Masters presentation informed us — you can see a selection of data from that presentation in this issue’s Data Centre on page 50 — shipments of TV sets in Western Europe have been on a uniformal decline since reaching a high of 51 million in 2010. Allied to that is the seeming indifference in consumer attitudes towards UHD sets — Futuresource’s Living with Digital consumer research finding that 42 per cent would be interested in buying a 4K set, with the remaining 58 per cent neither here nor there on the matter.
“We are not an industry shy of great minds — creators, thinkers, visionaries — and neither are we lacking those who bring these visions to life”
This is pertinent for the composition of the broadcast sector of the moment, with talk of digital transformation and hyper- connected-this-and-that. But it is also pertinent where it concerns innovation, and whether it is carried out for the sake of itself, and at the expense of the growth it was born to deliver.
Barriers to adoption These were some of the more prominent questions to busy my thoughts during the Beyond HD Masters conference in June, as discussion hovered around 4K, frame rate, aspect ratio, and on to 8K, 16K and wherever next
But, as discussion at Beyond HD Masters alluded to, the indifference of the ‘58 per cent’, if you will, isn’t just about cost. One of the barriers to widespread adoption at present is a lack of available and proposed content — there simply isn’t enough content for consumers to justify upgrading their TV equipment for an occasional experience. Once the supply sufficiently influences the demand, and we can confidently assume that it will, then we will start to see traction in the UHD movement, and that wonderfully rich culture of innovation can be allowed to thrive more effectively.
The delivery of
experiences, not services One quote that struck a chord this month arrived in a dispatch from PricewaterhouseCoopers, whose entertainment and media lead partner, Phil Stokes, expressed his views on how personal preference could, and perhaps should, drive a new breed of personalised content, consumable across all devices. “Forget audience fragmentation. From a consumer’s angle, it’s about ubiquity — a consistent feel across multiple devices,” he said. “Building this relationship offers a global opportunity as the economy moves from the delivery of products and services to the delivery of outcomes and experiences.”
It is enticing language: the delivery of outcomes and experiences. If the broadcast sector is to appropriately keep pace with the digital evolution, then perhaps Stokes’ sentiments are correct. TV broadcast has always had engagement at its heart, and despite the furore around the amount and quality of pixels on ever expanding screens, content remains ‘king’. But as this content becomes ever more personalised to the consumer, perhaps we should be talking more of the delivery of experiences; the encapsulation of several component parts that engage the viewer to their own specifications, on their own terms.
You can read more from June’s Beyond HD Masters conference in our review on page 29, with a foreword from the IABM’s John Ive.
I sincerely hope you enjoy this issue of TVBEurope.
James McKeown Executive Editor
Melanie Dayasena-Lowe provides a round up of the latest news from the Content Everywhere world. 4
6 Register John Wilson
Remembering John Wilson, the IBC Chairman, who passed away in June. We take a look back at his career.
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12 – 21 Workflow Avid Roundtable part two Neal Romanek presents the final instalment of our report from BT Tower, where TVBEurope and Avid hosted the latest roundtable on collaborative workflows.
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23 – 33 4K: Beyond HD Beyond HD Masters report We look back on the main takeaway themes and discussion points from the 2014 Beyond HD Masters conference at London’s BAFTA. IABM Chairman, John Ive, provides the foreword.
29 34 – 42 Feature
Mergers and acquisitions in a recovering Europe Rachael Cairns of Goodbody Stockbrokers, assesses the landscape for broadcast entities amidst a recovering European market, while we look at some of the protagonists driving the recent M&A activity.
44 – 47 Graphics Forum Graphically illustrated Philip Stevens brings together a host of experts to discuss the varying challenges facing graphic system providers in this month’s forum.
48 – 50 Data Centre The drivers of growth
PwC’s Adam Edelshain details the findings from PwC’s Entertainment and Media Outlook that suggests advertising and electronic home video will drive growth in the EMEA Television market over the next five years.
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