Blackarrow Consulting

It has been over two weeks since my heady five days at the RAI in Amsterdam, the first without construction work for the first time in quite a few years. As always there was an awful lot of catching up with friends and ex-colleagues, but there was a serious amount of tech fun to see particularly around Halls 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 13. If I was to sum it up in one sentence, I would say second screen and titchy high end STBs.

2nd Screen was everywhere, with quite a bit being shown about how you can content from anywhere to anywhere which is certainly showing promise, with some of the demos even actually make use of content protection that content owners will accept. However more efforts are needed there to make this really mainstream, mostly from real world experience being fed back from those early deployments that are creeping out. I certainly am very optimistic that 2nd screen can make the jump from small operator to big during 2012.

It seemed like every STB maker was pushing new higher powered boxes, which are definitely needed to cope with the early signs of new UIs as people try to compete with the swooshing UI that is NDS’s Snowflake (shown in its V12 form this year). There was definitely much effort to try and move away from the simple Grid Guide, however it is still yet to proven that there is customer acceptance of these new approaches. Intel were also there with more examples of the use of their Atom derived chipsets certainly pushing the envelope in raw power to meet those demands, although there were definitely some awards to be given to some companies who were really making the best of the older chipsets.

There was also quite a bit of ‘Do you want to see our Android based box’, however I did not really see anything new in this respect as to be honest this is just another flavour of Linux with a Java based middleware on top with a UI that is generally not suited for being driven by a remote control. Some work to do with those between now and next September and STB makers need to be reminded that just because you can, does not mean you should.

There was one glaring fact though that was obvious to all, and reported in several places since then – the almost complete absence in the STB halls of 3D. Is this a clear sign of the sentiment that is coming through.. that 3D is not the draw for viewer eyeballs? Second screen has certainly blotted out the interest in 3D, and that is definitely a whole lot more desired by the customer, definitely more mainstream. There was a lot of 3D though in the Production halls but is that a sign that the ‘meh’ness of 3D just has not passed back up the content pipeline yet? 3D to me is the new Teletext – in every TV but used by a small minority of diehard viewers.

There was also a very positive sentiment with regard to business at IBC considering the economic situation, although to be honest IBC2008 was like that and just a few short weeks after that IBC the market dropped quite a bit for some months as the banks sorted themselves out and companies paused or dropped new projects until Q2 2009 came along. I hope that this does not happen this time and that between now and IBC2012, projects will continue to deliver new innovation into the viewers living room.