As another IBC draws to a close, what were the highlights and key talking points at this year’s show? Having braved the bad weather outside and the busy halls inside, here is what caught my attention.

Cloud & IP

Inevitably, cloud and IP were widely discussed on vendor stands and in the conference tracks. The IP Showcase, improved and extended beyond that shown at NAB in April, was impressive and shows how quickly we can move as an industry if we align and commit. The interoperability of SMPTE ST 2110, AES67 and IS-04 on display between vendors, in a real-world setting, was a case in point.

The cloud vendors had an increased presence at the show, signifying perhaps the wider role they play in media these days and cloud support was an advertised feature of most products on display elsewhere.

In summary, the building blocks of the next gen broadcast stack are starting to look pretty solid.

VR & AR

There were less VR headsets running demos on the show floor, and certainly less queues to experience them, at this year’s IBC compared to last. There was also plenty of discussion during the conference sessions as to whether VR is ‘dead’ and the ‘new 3DTV’. This seems premature. The first generation of consumer devices have only been around for little over a year and there is a dearth of content for those who have bought them. Let’s not write it off completely just yet.

AR on the other hand is on the ascendency and there seemed to be a lot of optimism about its prospects (like VR a year ago). This is partly due to the fact that AR, such as that promoted by Apple in its ARkit SDK in IOS11, is more lightweight and will be supported by a large number of existing devices by the end of the year. We just need to see some exciting examples of how it can augment the TV experience now.

AI

The newcomer with the biggest impact at the show, at least in terms of talking about it, was AI. A number of panel sessions cited AI as a key strategic enabler for the future and many product venders talked up their support in roadmaps. This is interesting because if you look through the coverage of IBC 2016 you will struggle to find significant reference to AI at all. How has it come, seemingly out of nowhere, to such prominence? The answer is a combination of how the term AI is being used and broader public discussion and awareness of it.

AI in broadcasting is being used in some cases to describe new incarnations of existing terms such as data analytics, intelligent monitoring, automation, and content recommendation. But it also represents genuinely transformative improvements in areas such as machine learning, computer vision, automated speech recognition, natural language processing and more. Let’s just be sensible in how we attribute the terminology.

Cyber Security

One other area that could not have escaped anyone’s notice at the show was Cyber Security. This is a great thing as we need to raise awareness, knowledge and focus on this topic across the board. It is very encouraging to see the entire industry come together to debate and share experience on this area.

And so, another IBC winds down, time to start planning for NAB.

Steve Plunkett, CTO, Broadcast and Media Services