Ultra-HDTV

The television set and viewing of our childhood are gone.” So said Google’s President of Global Partnerships, Daniel Alegre, in his closing keynote to the broadcast equipment trade show NAB, adding: “A newer, better TV is rising from the ashes.”

While Alegre was referring to the rise of globally popular online content creators such as PewDiePie, the focus of the Las Vegas event was on the disruptive potential of internet technologies, higher picture resolutions and panoramic video streams.

September’s International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) will mark the transition from hype to reality for a wide range of transformative new technologies. Attendees of the week-long broadcasting conference and exhibition in Amsterdam will be able to assess the growing impact of Ultra-HDTV, big data and Cloud computing.

It is no coincidence that IBC has themed its entire conference as “The future of media in an age of disruption”.

1. Why your TV should talk to your toaster: connected-TV and the 'internet of things'

One of the big draws at television technology shows such as NAB in Las Vegas is the "living room of the future", with its wall-filling, multi-image, interactive TV screen. Such "wallpaper displays" are still, largely, mock-ups, not demonstrations of real services.

But the "internet of things" (IoT) – the multiplication of connected devices, body-worn sensors and Cloud data services – could soon make such TVs a reality.

The NAB trade show, held every April in Las Vegas, used to bill itself as the place to see kit manufacturers parade their newest wares to broadcasters and producers. Headline-grabbing black boxes that perform cool, new tricks are, however, increasingly rare.

Today's production and post-­production tools tend, instead, to be software. They are, therefore, open to incremental and regular upgrades, and not tied to the cycle of trade shows.

Even the hardware is designed to evolve with tweaks to the central chip set, rather than a wholesale ­redesign.