IBC 2018: The OTT Takeover Looms
The idea that OTT will eventually eclipse traditional delivery methods is nothing new, but after seeing some of the latest developments at IBC this year the cord cutting revolution may soon be complete! The industry is evolving rapidly and new tech developments have built new momentum. It’s certainly an exciting time to be apart of the industry and we’re eager to see what the year ahead has in store.
IBC has been considered the annual go to industry event since 1994, and is the leading exhibition and conference for media, entertainment, and technology. The event attracts professionals from around the world involved in content creation, management, and delivery. Here at Magine Pro, integral team members have been attending IBC for over 15 years and since launching Magine Pro in 2016 we’ve exhibited in hall 14.
On reflection of this year’s event, IBC 2018 gave a much better insight into the future of media streaming than we’ve seen before. In particular, how media streaming is evolving and what direction it may take in future. The Content Everywhere hall 14 was packed with vendors presenting much more commercially efficient streaming solutions. There was also an emphasis on diversifying of CDN and meta clouds – something we’ve expected for some time but they’re finally looking like real and viable alternatives.
There also appeared to be more solutions that can efficiently handle ingestion of large-scale broadcasts. Both AWS and Google showcased new products for this. The actual transition of legacy TV distribution is finally about to take place, or so it seems.
AWS, in particular, demonstrated new services that address the bottleneck issues for live streaming, namely how to ingest traditionally aired linear broadcasts in an optimized and more efficient way. And since it’s AWS, these services are already fully integrated into their ecosystem, allowing their existing partners to take advantage of them in existing deployments. For Magine Pro, it means we’re able to offer more efficient ingest services to our clients through the Magine Platform AWS environment.
Google and AWS are certainly eating their way into the IBC halls as both had much larger booths than in previous years. A sign of what’s to come no doubt and where the most interesting development will take place; the transition to the cloud – next years outspoken mantra.
Facebook was also present in the Content Everywhere hall this year but didn’t have as big a presence as we anticipated. They surprisingly seemed like a much smaller video tech entrant compared to the likes of Google and Amazon – now the video and media behemoths of IBC.
We found the speaking and panel session agenda at the Content Hub was particularly well balanced this year though with engaging topics and debates regarding the state of the industry and its future. Our Head of Commercial Operations, Fredrik Engdahl also took part in one of the sessions, ‘Telco TV: The Convergence of Broadcast and Telecoms’. If you missed it, you can catch up here.
We also showcased our branded OTT solutions and services for live, linear TV and VOD content on our stand in hall 14 . If you didn’t get a chance to stop by, you can find out more about our products here or download our latest white paper. Get in touch if you would like to learn more or try a demo.
We’ll be heading to Cannes for MIPCOM this month. If you’re attending and would like to meet with a member of the Magine Pro team, get in touch!
As for IBC, we’ll see you next year!
