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2-IMMERSE in IBC’s Future Zone

DOUG WILLIAMS of BT R&D offers some first thoughts after IBC 2018:

2-IMMERSE was well represented in the Future Zone at IBC – the world’s leading media technology exhibition – over the weekend, from 13-18 September. Team members had the chance to meet, address and learn from more than 57,000 of the most engaged power brokers and technical analysts in media and entertainment. In addition, we launched the open source software that underpins the multi-screen personalised TV demos that 2-IMMERSE has developed.

Apart from the stand in the Future Zone, results from the project, including a compelling rationale extolling the benefits of object based media approach used by the project, were also delivered at the IBC conference by Ian Kegel on behalf of the wider team.

Many important industry stakeholders were there including Jamie Hindhaugh, COO BT Sport, who said,  ‘This is the best thing I’ve seen at IBC; you just know that has been designed with the fans in mind, I think it’s beautiful.’ We also rubbed shoulders with producers, directors, technologists, analysts and broadcasters from all over Europe and around the world.

Visitors to the stand were particular encouraged to see that the project’s software contributions were being made available through open source software licenses and every time we showed the Fan Zone demo, they smiled. We lost count of the number of times we were told ‘I like that’ and ‘this is the future’. As the teams disperse back to their work places we’re encouraged, feeling our focus on exploitation is paying dividends.

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IBC launch for 2-IMMERSE open source software

2-IMMERSE is approaching the end of its three year term.  With three and a half of our four prototype services developed, and with them all running on the same common platform, it is a good time to share the progress we have made with the wider media community. That is why we are spending a lot of time and effort developing our stand and our presence more generally at IBC.  IBC (the International Broadcasting Convention) is held each September at the RAI Amsterdam and is regarded as the world’s most influential media, entertainment and technology show. The exhibition dates this year are Friday 14 to Tuesday 18.

2-IMMERSE will have its own stand, in the Future Zone (Hall 8 F46), but you’ll also see 2-IMMERSE project outputs on the stands of ChyronHego (Hall 7, C21), of IRT (Hall 10, F51)  and in the conference programme (Sunday 16 at 16.45 in the Forum) where Ian Kegel is presenting a description of the technical platform used to deliver object based productions.

Through a number of channels, including this blog post, we are inviting friends in the industry to come and see what we have achieved and to learn specifically about the software we will be launching at the end of the project.  2-IMMERSE has recognised a number of key challenges related to the delivery of object based media productions across multiple screens and has sought to develop common, extensible solutions to these that will be made available as open source software.  In addition we will be describing a reference architecture that will help explain the technology components required to deliver our object based experiences.

The software components we are developing all play valuable roles in the delivery of our multi screen experiences.  The software components will:

• Enable frame accurate multi-screen synchronisation
• Manage layouts across multiple screens
• Manage timelines across multiple screens
• Enable unified sign-on for multi-screen experiences
• Provide bandwidth orchestration capability to help deliver the “best” experience even when bandwidth is limited

2-IMMERSE worked closely with rights holders throughout the project, setting – and meeting – the challenges of delivering one of its prototypes as a live end-to-end production.  We chose the high profile 2018 FA Cup final as the object of this trial and at IBC we will be showing the production tools we developed to do this. We will also be available to discuss how the production chain needs to be evolved to support object based delivery.

2-IMMERSE set out to show that object based delivery approach can be used to effectively deliver immersive multi-screen experiences that over achieve compared to their single screen alternatives.  What ‘over achieve’ means depends upon the context.  For the sport examples it means delivering more on the brand objective for the rights holders; in the case of BT Sport that means helping viewers get to the heart of sport – you can see what we have done towards this objective with our MotoGP at Home demo.

If you come to IBC you’ll be amongst the first to see our new FanZone experience for football – a prototype service that will highlight how the object based approach can be used to create partisan representations of games in public spaces. This exceptional demo is also based on the 2018 FA cup final.

‘Over-achieving’ for theatre companies with education objectives means supporting their ambition to allow equal provision and equal access to the best theatre-based education resources through connected screens.  For our Theatre At Home demonstration it was about delivering a more social and engaging experience of watching filmed theatre in the home.  These experiences will all be on show at IBC and we are keen to share our enthusiasm for our achievements with the wider broadcasting and production industries.

We hope to see you in Amsterdam!

In the Future Zone, Hall 8, Stand F46.

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2-IMMERSE at NAB 2018

The trade fair, exhibition and conference NAB is one of the fixtures on the calendars of all the key influencers in the broadcasting industry.  NAB, which took place 7-12 April in Las Vegas, and its sister conference IBC, in Amsterdam 13-18 September, are great litmus tests for what is important for the industry. This year the idea of immersion was strongly featured and there was a great deal of interest in high resolution VR technologies.

ChyronHego, partner in 2-IMMERSE and provider of sports graphics and data to the broadcasting industry, took to NAB our project’s interpretation of what immersion can mean. ChyronHego used the multi-screen object based broadcasting concept demonstrated by the MotoGP service prototype (which can be seen in this video) to showcase the way we believe we can immerse viewers in an experience across multiple screens.

With private demonstrations in meeting rooms on the ChyronHego stand (the main stand is above, our demo set-up to the right), the work assumed a slightly mysterious hue. Since it remains a prototype, it was inappropriate to place our MotoGP demo front-and-centre of the ChyronHego stand, since such space is reserved for today’s products.

In private presentations, however, the work was introduced to many key influencers from more than 15 different broadcasters based in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, USA, Norway and the UK. ChyronHego’s Director of Software Development Stefan Fjellsten, who led the interactions, was delighted with the response:

It exceeded my expectations. Everyone was really positive with some asking for exclusive rights to the technology in their territory, and all of them trying to work out how the capability could be applied for the content rights they have.

The feedback and interest we garnered through this comparatively low-key display of our ideas at NAB is really encouraging.  Alongside the feedback we are getting from users it suggests strongly we are following a path that interests providers, rights holders and their viewing public. It also prompts us to be bold as we plan to provide a more comprehensive display of the project’s results at this year’s IBC iin the early autumn.

Thanks to Stefan Fjellsten for the photographs.

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