Sustainability: Key takeaways for APAC broadcasters that missed IBC2024

By Dr Amal Punchihewa

The IBC2024 Conference line-up featured a world-class mix of cutting-edge keynotes, presentations, panels, and other sessions tackling critical media challenges. Many sessions took place concurrently, despite the IBC Conference being scaled up to three days from two last year.

I had the opportunity to represent the Asia-Pacific Institute Broadcasting Development (AIBD) at IBC2024 and to strengthen partnerships and collaboration between AIBD and IBC stakeholders. For example, AIBD members not only attended IBC2024 but also presented some papers in the conference sessions.

The general feedback from a majority of attendees who attend IBC regularly was that this year’s edition was the best organised since the recovery from COVID-19.

Across busy show floors and packed theatres, IBC2024 addressed critical trends and issues driving changes across the media landscape while offering new show features, such as the AI Tech Zone, and IBC Talent Programme.

Speakers addressed a range of topics including artificial intelligence (AI) and human-machine collaboration, free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) and its impact on monetisation, the fight against fake news and disinformation, and other disruptive trends that are presenting both new challenges and opportunities. 

Indeed. themes that took centre stage included AI, fighting disinformation in news, sustainability, 5G, cloud, esports, immersive experiences, over-the-top (OTT) and streaming, adtech, human capacity building and their wellbeing, edge computing, connected technologies, the need to foster talent across the industry, and many more.

Topics like human capacity building and their wellbeing, as well as sustainability, AI and disinformation, are all topics that were discussed at AIBD’s Asia Media Summit AMS 2024. If you are a regular reader of APB+, you would have discovered the alignment in terms of relevance and significance of topics that were discussed at events such as the Asia Media Summit in APAC and IBC in Europe.

Sustainability was a hot topic and various aspects related to sustainability in the broadcast and media sector were discussed in many sessions. The impact that streaming may have on the environment, the carbon footprint from streaming operations, and how to measure and mitigate the negative impacts were all discussed. 

The Media Sustainability Awards recognised the contributions that people and organisations are making to mitigate carbon footprint due to broadcast and media operations. AIBD was a finalist in the leadership category of the award ceremony organised by Corporate Star Awards.

Representing the Asia-Pacific region, AIBD also became a member of the Greening of Streaming organisation. AIBD will continue its pioneering and leading work in APAC to engineer, inspire and educate broadcast and media to minimise carbon footprint and augment the “greening” of technologies for streaming. 

While it would be a challenge to summarise all the key outcomes from the multitude of activities that took place over four days of IBC2024, it is still worth looking at some of the current technology trends and examine their impact on the future transformation of the broadcast and media industry.

There was an industry update from the IABM’s Technology Roadmap and the State of the Industry. IABM members shared from their studies that (i) despite signs of improvement in macro conditions, business confidence has fallen in 2024, (ii) although cloud technology remains the top priority on the roadmap, media companies are increasingly prioritising investments in AI, and (iii) for business, broadcast remains the top market for most MediaTech suppliers though other parallel markets have grown in importance in the US and Europe in the last few years.

There was no mention of APAC. But as a mega trend, it was reported that environment, social and governance (ESG) is having an increasing impact on the MediaTech business model.

This year’s IBC Conference presented a world-class mix of cutting-edge keynotes, presentations, and panels. These offered delegates exclusive access to insightful, inspirational, and entertaining content from a diverse array of thought leaders from across the global media, entertainment and technology industry.

The sessions took a deep dive into issues and themes relating to IBC2024’s three core pillars: (i) Transformative Technology, (ii) Shifting Business Models, and (iii) People and Purpose.

IBC owners and partners such as IET and IEEE-BTS organised and presented many sessions and tracks. 5G broadcast was a topic that IEEE-BTS, as an owner of IBC, organised this year. The IEEE-BTS session at IBC2024 on the future of mobile television with 5G Broadcast was titled “Mobile TV – Finally?”

It was a major success with a receptive audience and a broad and capable group of speakers and panellists. The event was presented in two parts that collectively explored the potential of 5G broadcast technologies in transforming media consumption. Dr Peter Siebert of IEEE-BTS, Jordi Joan Giménez of 5G-MAG (Media Action Group) and Thomas Stockhammer of Qualcomm, collaborated to develop this technical session.

In Part 1, experts presented an in-depth overview of critical topics such as the latest developments in Standards Development Organisations (ATSC, DVB and 3GPP). Furthermore, updates on the latest field trials covering the European football championship in Germany and the Olympics in France were presented.

Part 2 featured a dynamic round-table discussion where implementers and other stakeholders shared their experiences and future plans, focusing on real-world applications and the path forward for bringing 5G broadcast technologies into the market.

A panellist from the Malaysian Communications & Multimedia Commission (MCMC) shared the latest updates on the status of 5G Broadcast in Malaysia.

IET also organised sessions around the topic of cybersecurity. Several technical papers were presented proposing cutting-edge technologies for the broadcast and media industry. The conference also offered delegates exclusive access to presentations on the IBC Technical Papers, which showcased world-renowned, peer-reviewed original research delving into solutions to real-world industry challenges.

There was a technical paper session titled 5G Technology – Convergence with Broadcast, which discussed the journey to blend 5G and traditional broadcast. One of two papers investigated the technical feasibility of a 5G broadcast simultaneously co-existing in the same UHF channel as a traditional broadcast (ATSC 3.0, DVB-T2, ISDB-T).

This promises to be a powerful tool for service migration in a congested spectrum when balancing the needs of legacy devices and existing regulations.

The second paper finalises the work to provide service discovery (using DVB-I) with the delivery options of 5G (5G broadcast, 5G media streaming or hybrid) for which a proof-of-concept system delivered to a commercial smartphone was successfully demonstrated at DVB World in March 2024.

The best 10 papers were published by IET and the best paper – Advancements in Radiance Field Techniques for Volumetric Video Generation: A Technical Overview — was recognised with the IBC Best Paper award.

This year’s programme included papers on

(i) Sustainability – energy efficiency, spanning devices to delivery systems.

ii) AI in production – training and targeting.

(iii) Audio and speech – advances in production.

(iv) Provenance – what can we trust? 

(v) Streaming – the view from each end.

(vi) XR – advances in capturing, rendering, and delivering

(vii) Advances in video coding – encoder optimisations and film grain.

viii) 5G case studies – public network slicing trials and striving for low latency; and

(ix) 5G technology – convergence with broadcast.

AI was another hot topic at IBC2024. Multiple AI-focused sessions and speakers across show floor theatres and IBC Conference spotlighted practical applications driving industry advances. The new AI Tech Zone and IBC Talent Programme offer increased engagement around growing industry markets and areas of interest.

With IBC2025 already scheduled to take place from September 12-15 next year, the stage is already set for the media and entertainment sectors to design and redefine our industry’s agenda by championing new technologies, future business models, and creative innovations that have the potential to broaden the horizons of media in 2025, and beyond.