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FEATUREIBC, the Greatest Show on Earth?Back to Contents25By Chris ForresterAmsterdam’s giant IBC broadcasting show seemingly gets biggerevery year. This year’s eventattracted a thumping 45,000 visitors, up5% on 2005. Now it is fair to admit thatthis seems puny when compared toNAB’s massive 100,000+ visitors, butIBC’s organisers talk about qualitybeating quantity and about the trueinternational nature of the Dutch show.But setting aside such trite comparisonsthere were some discernable trends inevidence at the show, and talked aboutduring the conference sessions.Top of this list was IPTV, whichseems to have hit something of a brickwall in Europe. Growth has stalled tosuch an extent that a major technologysupplier, Tandberg Television, had toissue a profits warning just hours aheadof the show. CEO Eric Cooney summedup the situation in a statement, blaming“Late buying decisions”, although hestressed he felt the longer-term view onIPTV remained wholly favourable, “Weremain confident in the longer termoutlook for the business driven bycustomer demand for high-definition,IPTV, video-on-demand and interactiveadvertising solutions.”Cooney admitted that many telcos– in the US as well a Europe – foundprogramming for IP a challenge: “Todaythey are coming at the problem verydifferently, they know it is a businessimperative for them and essential fortheir survival that they enter the worldof video. It’s a major motivator, havingthis fire at their heels and focuses themind quite a bit in terms of answering‘what do we really need to do here?’”Blake Krikorian, co-founder andCEO of Sling MediaCooney wasn’t the only majorplayer bemoaning IPTV. “Some of thetier one telcos have been taking theirtime rolling out,” Graeme Packman,principal consultant at Understanding &Solutions told a packed room at the‘IPTV - the future has arrived’ session.“The slowdown is starting to underminethe credibility of the concept and this isundermining the confidence of contentowners. Some of them are thinking‘Maybe we can do this ourselvesthrough websites or other servicesrather than working with the telco guyswho may not be as organised as wethought.’” IPTV subscribers willcontinue to grow from about 6.5msubscribers at the end of this year tonearly 37m by 2010, but there will be wilddifferences among countries dependingon their competitive landscape, saidPackman, who predicted it will be a“long time” before financial successcomes to most IPTV rollouts. By 2010,he predicted IPTV revenues will be $4bn,or about 10% of total projected pay-TVrevenues of $42bn.However, if Tandberg had to sufferFritz Pleitgen, DG of Germanpublic broadcaster WDRNHK UHDVcamerafrom a stalling of demand, they werehugely bullish on HDTV. Cooney’s teamshowed their latest HDTV compressionkit, perfect for satellite distribution usingDVB/S2, and MPEG4 compression,which – says Cooney – can deliver highdefin a 6Mb/s bit stream (when used ina statistical multiplexer). “By and largetoday’s accepted bit rate for Stat-Mux,advanced compression high def isbetween 8-10 Mbps. Before the end ofthe year we’ll be down to 6 Mbps forhigh def and to be honest we are prettyimpressed with the end result,” saidCooney.The IBC judges agreed, and at anAwards ceremony at the show Tandbergpicked up two ‘gongs’, for its RX1290multiformat professional receiver whichwon the award for best satellite contribution/distribution/transmissionsolution, while its zBand contentdelivery platform picked up the prize forbest content-on-demand solution. Thedouble success built on Tandberg’s sixnominations for the awards – the mostfor any company at this year’s event.October 2006SATMAGAZINE.COM