成人论坛

I first visited in the Eighties. It was in Brighton, much of it to be found in the latterly infamous Grand Hotel. I had recently graduated and begun my engineering career building sound desks. There were very few desks at IBC that year mainly because IBC at that time was a TV event and there were very few British TV Sound Control Desk specialists. The exhibition was dominated by the giants of the era: Ampex, Philips, Marconi, Link, and Thorn-EMI, famous TV names all now faded away. Sony and Panasonic were present but their products had yet to dominate. IBC was quite a genteel affair and I, along with my college friends, walked away with bags full of information on the latest tech - C-Format VTR’s, auto line-up cameras, Ambisonics and 1125 line MAC broadcasting - eager to inflict our new found knowledge on unsuspecting colleagues. As I recall, each of the stands we visited had spoken to us politely and in some depth.

I found myself reflecting nostalgically on that first visit as I started to write this summary of my time at IBC 2018, and I don’t think the comparison throws a flattering light on our times. To explain why, I first need to detail my goals at this year’s exhibition.

Goal one was to discuss with all the vendors who had contributed to the 成人论坛’s 2015 proof of concept for IP technology in Production (an event that took place at 成人论坛 Wales in Llandaff) their understanding of IP concepts at that time; and benchmark each vendor’s enthusiasm for the concepts against the reality of their products three years on. I was also interested in road-mapping future progress beyond IBC.

Goal two was to debate four headline concepts - Lateralisation, Virtualisation, Content from a Catalogue, and Value Added Data - which is my attempt at summarising the technical challenge set in September by 成人论坛 Director General Lord Hall and Matthew Postgate, 成人论坛 Chief Technology & Product Officer to reinvent the 成人论坛 online. I expected debate to vary, as many vendors only contribute in areas where one or maybe two headlines apply.

On day one, I visited most of the traditional vendors of sound technology and found that while some were still adhering to proprietary IETF technology - despite being made aware of an open specifications approach during the Llandaff PoC – others were beginning an open specification approach.

On day two, I expanded my coverage - tackling mainly content capture devices. While the larger companies had made some progress towards lateralisation, the vast majority stayed locked to their traditional methods of interconnect, necessitating the fitting of adaptor devices before their capture technology can be fully integrated into an IP studio. Many of the smaller companies were still unaware of the approaching change, but readily confessed to the possibilities - seeking only guidance on what the exact 成人论坛 requirements would be.

On day three, I approached a number of integration companies and was surprised to find a degree of indifference about the changes on the horizon. Generally speaking, knowledge in this community seems to centre on the few companies involved in new install projects across Europe, such as the 成人论坛’s Cardiff Central Square. Explaining to these companies that the 成人论坛 needs to push its innovation pipeline faster than the fifteen year SMPTE/AES standards cycles to which they’ve become accustomed was difficult, and met with a deal of scepticism.

Worn down a little by the intellectual treacle of the previous day, I began day four by picking up with the companies who chose not to visit us in Llandaff, and some of the reasoning for their absence was particularly intriguing. Suitably chastened, I thought I’d treat myself by checking progress on a technology that seems unlikely to be mainstream until the end of the next business cycle – Solid Photography – and found evidence of two companies, both German, already working hard in this area. Apparently the 成人论坛 have contributed to the research work already. I look forward to following this up, although the render farm needed to drive the capture process did seem impracticably large at present.

For my final day, I followed up on some meetings promised earlier in the week. Some of the larger IT vendors are now offering machine learning that may assist in tagging our content such that it will carry valuable data for processes further along the production workflow. Hopefully we can schedule some trials to test the efficacy of this assumption in the near future. I also tried to catch-up with all the talkback system vendors, an area of particular interest as many of these systems within the 成人论坛 are now reaching the end of their useful life.

In summary, although the message I had to deliver was brief enough, there wasn’t really enough time to get around all the vendors I needed to visit, especially as a number of them didn’t stay for the entire convention. Apart from a few select areas, the atmosphere was badgering rather than co-operative and my initial trip into the Amsterdam RAI and final journey away from our hotel were both marred by a completely disjointed city ticketing system. Much of the charm and genial conversation of IBC at its original seaside location seemed to have evaporated in Amsterdam. IBC seems to have forgotten why it was created in the first place, lost in a giant fairground of tech that, literally wore a hole in my shoes.