The IBC Future Zone has become a jewel in the crown of the IBC Show. It is a fantastic collection of the latest cutting-edge projects and prototypes from leading R&D labs around the world, brought together into a single exhibition area in the Park Foyer, next to Hall 8.
In selecting exhibits for the IBC Future Zone, we try to select ideas and technologies from all sizes of companies – from large multi-national organisations to the smallest start-ups – and we start from the premise that the craziest proposals may well be the best. There are only really four guidelines for the selection committee:
l The exhibit must be interesting, innovative and valid
l It must not be a product that is already on the market – these can be shown on company stands in the other exhibition halls
l It should consist of a practical demonstration, with hands-on interaction where possible
l Its presentation should have a ‘wow-factor’ (measurable on the Richter Scale), to encourage passing visitors to stop and discover more.
This year’s IBC Future Zone exhibitors are truly international, with representatives from a number of Japanese technology initiatives in both broadcasting and communications, MPEG and European collaborative projects, Chinese broadcast science projects, North American industry developments and Korean media research. There are incredible exhibits from some of the major players at the forefront of our industry, like NHK, BBC, Cisco and VRT.
The practical demonstrations on the stands in the IBC Future Zone include: personalisation and enhancement of the viewer experience; highlights of the FIFA World Cup in 8K at 120fps; 4K Cloud services; future digital radio broadcasting; a day in our future ‘Connected Life’; new technologies for AV archive restoration; ‘smart’ convergent media; 360° viewable 3D displays and more.
The IBC Future Zone is a portal to view our future directions, rather than just a glimpse of the future!
It is also home to IBC Posters. These are the highly respected, rigorously peer-reviewed ideas chosen by the IBC Technical Papers Committee for their relevance to the subjects of IBC’s Conference Programme and their ability to startle your imagination. The Posters are displayed as two A0-size ‘snap-shots’ of innovation, and this year we have created a great new viewing area with more of a modern ‘art gallery’ presentation style. This will enable visitors to view the displays more conveniently, and engage with the Poster authors in more open and attractive surroundings.
We are especially pleased to have attracted Poster presentations for IBC2014 from many different countries around the world. The fascinating topics of international research that are being presented by the authors, from both industry and academia include: UHDTV-IP; HEVC in the studio; Perception of 3D audio; CGI and editing for 3D images; Crowd-sourced music; DTV mobile surveillance; Object-oriented storytelling; Visual quality metrics; 4K broadcast on a budget; Adaptive bitrates and cloud-based architectures for multimedia and more.
The Future Zone is open to all, throughout the IBC Show.
