Digesting the Future

This week, Geneva hosted what has to be one of the most interesting set of debates in the broadcast industry for ages: namely the SMPTE & EBU Emerging Technologies Forum. While there’s always a slight sense of theologians debating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin about these things – not to mention the problems of the technological deterministic mindset that tends to dominate when propeller-heads/beakers/boffins/call ‘em what you will all get together – some interesting stuff emerged.

The full dissection is over on the SMPTE Blog page maintained for this event by the ever-excellent Dick Hobbs, but here’s a quick bullet-pointed dissection of what we learned:

• Rights are going to be a significant problem moving forward into the multiscreen era
• Some random tech advances courtesy of Moore’s law (or at least a bastardisation thereof): 50bn connected devices by 2020; 18 stops of latitude; higher framerates; Super Hi-Vision (which is itself developing a 120fps signal) still on track for broadcast by 2020.
• Kids simply do not have TVs in their bedrooms anymore
• By 2015, 90% of all network traffic will be video. So codec improvement is an absolute necessity
• A regular movie is now delivered in 200 different versions
• Peter Hinssen, Across Technology: Although we feel we are immersed in digital technology today, we are only half way there, in the mid-point of the s-curve. As we cross into the second part of the digital s-curve we will start to talk about the benefits, not the features. Then it will become the new normal.
  
  
• And, perhaps most importantly, Brigitta’s Five Laws of the Future should be enshrined and chanted by the audience at the start of any such future events:

1. Anyone who claims to understand the future is either a multimillionaire or a charlatan
2. We do not over-rate the rapidity of innovations, we under-rate it
3. Public service broadcasting will continue to exist, but only if it develops from programme production to multimedia content production
4. Necessary change is not dependent on technical facilities but on the ability of change management
5. We as the decision-making group risk underestimate the impact of innovations because we are out of touch with the next generation – (Brigitta Nickelsen, Radio Bremen)