IBC

World Screen Weekly, September 27, 2007

Television has entered a new era of channel abundance, offering the promise of high-definition images, large plasma screens and even 3-D TV.

Television as we know it will soon be swallowed up by the swirling video vortex of content over broadband, mobile, IPTV and new digital services.

At IBC in Amsterdam, there was plenty of evidence supporting both statements.

New sales announced by equipment manufacturers proved that broadcasting continues to grow rapidly around the world. For example, Harris Corporation, one of the largest global providers of broadcast equipment, announced major deals with channels and platforms like Poland’s Telewizja Polska, South Africa’s M-Net, Spain’s Overon and Canada’s Global Ontario.

“The world is hungry for channels,” declares Tim Thorsteinson, the president of Harris Corporation’s broadcast communications division. His company has counted about 150,000 television channels worldwide—including specialty outlets. Harris estimates that number will rise rapidly to a staggering 400,000 in a few years.

Alongside this channel explosion, HDTV continues to grow. In the U.S., where the government has required TV stations to switch from analog to digital transmission by February 17, 2009, national networks and local stations alike have begun broadcasting HD signals and consumers are buying HD sets.

In most of the rest of the world (ironically, some would say) the emergence of HDTV is being driven not by government mandate but by the marketplace. Producers, concerned that anything now made in standard definition will not be sellable in the future, are protecting their investments by shooting everything in HD. Broadcasters, empowered by digital technology, are starting to transmit HD signals. And viewers, encouraged by the availability of HD programming, are purchasing HD receivers.

And as if HD were not enough, NHK demonstrated UHDTV, or Ultra-HD, which has 16 times the resolution of HDTV.

But while HDTV has long been increasing its profile at IBC, another technology, 3-D, took many by surprise this year. Stereoscopic images made their debut in cinemas in the 1950s. Until recently a niche phenomenon attached to IMAX theaters and a few feature films like The Polar Express and Spy Kids, 3-D has suddenly emerged as an option for television.

The production of 3-D content was a topic on the conference program, and exhibitors showed products that could make it a reality. For example, Quantel, a major provider of post-production technology, wowed IBC attendees by donning them with glasses and screening striking stereoscopic footage of sports action, rock concerts, and undersea cinematography produced by PACE, a company that has developed the Fusion 3-D production system with support from Titanic director James Cameron.

But alongside this drumbeat of bigger and better, IBC attendees also heard the message of smaller and portable—in a word, mobile. And while the number of TV channels capable of carrying HD programming is exploding, that growth is paralleled by an explosion in the ownership of mobile phones, for whose small screens technologies like HD and 3-D are complete overkill.

To accommodate the growing number of mobile video exhibitors, IBC opened a new hall in 2006, the Mobile Zone. This year, it overflowed with attendees and was a hotbed of debate over the controversial EU-backed DVB-H standard for video over mobile. The standard’s main rival is MediaFLO, based on technology developed by U.S.-based Qualcomm, which is being tested by BSkyB, among others. “Live TV and data [sent] to mobile devices, including receive-only units, can be quite compelling,” said Jerry Hanley, Qualcomm’s European regional director for MediaFLO Technologies.

These receive-only devices are essentially small, portable TV sets. Qualcomm has signed content deals with major providers, including studios, pay-TV services and networks.

Supporting MediaFLO technology at IBC was the trade group FLO Forum, whose president, Kamil Grajski, warned that broadcasters risk losing customers unless they take measures to ensure the distribution of their content via mobile TV. Grajski says the technology the Forum supports is the best one for simulating “the streaming we typically equate with broadcast TV.” It is already being used by Verizon’s V Cast 3G service in the U.S.

It is not a question of whether TV will move to outlets other than the screen in the living room; it is a question of when, and to what degree. No one has the answer today, but everyone agrees that the traditional television community finds itself challenged. But when it comes to defending their turf against the onslaught of alternative media, broadcasters are in possession of an unassailable asset: a pre-existing, simple, and free direct connection to consumers.

In a keynote, Gary Shapiro, the president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association in the U.S., summed it up best: “You still have a direct pipeline into almost every home. And it’s easy. No WiFi, or limited download, or subscription to pay. No complicated message on the screen. Just a simple button to touch, and consumers are automatically dialed into your fare.”

—By Peter Caranicas