Award-winning Nadine Dereza chaired this year's IBC 2022 review session at the IET Savoy Place, organised and co-hosted by the IET Central London Network and Royal Television Society. The panel consisted of;

• Mehboob Siddiqui, Client Partner NTT Data UK
• Russell Trafford-Jones, Chair IET Media Technical Network
• Muki Kulhan, IBC Accelerator Innovation Co-lead
• Neal Romanek, Editor of online video innovation magazine FEED
• Jonathan Chappell-Seetayah (IP Broadcast Project Engineer, Timeline TV, and RTS Young Technologist of the Year 2022)

Mehboob started the session by explaining that the pandemic exposed inefficiencies within media production across the whole delivery spectrum such as to facilitate ‘remote production’ there was a need to lean on 5G, however in a time where industry was experience cost cutting, cloud-based media supply chain like over-the-top (OTT) media service were able to maximum platform efficiencies that led to increased subscribership. Now, post pandemic, cost of living has once again challenged the consumer and therefore new models should be expected; this of course, over the free EU broadcasting infrastructure, might make it easier for USA based media outlets to respond as the ‘free to air’ categories is in a controlled environment. Along with subscriptions models, sustainability is now being focused on more and it will be up to the industry to take green innovations and apply them to new linear services.

Russell discussed how the use of technology plays an important role, bringing business, video and audio people together to talk about trending topics; the more of this new behavior we see, the more technology will mature including new innovations of ‘low latency streaming’ creating more resilient products for media outlets and consumers. This includes security too, where it is getting more important for client to test their vendors and associated equipment, including adding DRM into the media offering.

Muki highlighted that all these new innovations including legacy technologies require people and technology development to fuse together and that is exactly where the IBC accelerator framework comes into play. Working across all media disciplines from blockchain, content delivery, 5G, to spatial audio engineering, the framework nurtures innovations by making the most of solutions and guidance from champions. Interestingly, this program does not hold onto the Intellectual Property (IP).

Jonathan spoke about the future of linear TV remaining relevant due to its infrastructural dependency. However cloud production is gaining momentum, such as developments in infrastructure as a code, containerisation, linear mapping, retraining is key, as it’s no longer one cable, which means the media engineers need to be ready to work with other converging technology experts, such as InfoSec engineers, who need to be engaged earlier on in the production to make sure IT and Broadcasting merge successfully.

He spoke about the need for standards and that vendor neutrality is also important when considering media innovations, not everyone wants their laptop to have the same sound manufactured the same, where he has noticed that there are more non-standard budget versions of media products now coming into the market.

Neal started by explaining he is happy he took the train to the IBC venue < you had to be there >. He spoke also about how after the pandemic, distributed broadcasting normalised and post pandemic, CEO’s started to use more broadcast innovations by creating new creative broadcasting processes. He noticed that this year at the IBC, interactions were different and expects that the format for giant trade shows will change in the coming years and that 360 sustainability efforts to reduce carbon footprints need to happen swiftly, this includes looking at power-consumption Vs business models, for example, the amount of energy needed used for ‘streaming’ compared to ‘on demand’ services.

The Q&A session was equally insightful, and you can relive the entire experience by listening to the lecture (including the closing remarks from Terry Marsh) on the ‘RTS London Podcast’ here.