Pierre Hunter, EVP Sales & Marketing, Custos Media Technologies, recently attended IBC 2022 in Amsterdam. Here, he shares his key observations.
After 3 years, the industry once again met up at IBC in Amsterdam from 9 to 12 September.
A few topics attracted my attention. There was much talk about FAST channels and the needs for low latency streaming. On this, the TheoPlayer and Synamedia’s HESP alliance seems to be growing and showed impressive results. RDK as a counter to AndroidTV seems to be gaining traction and had its own off-site summit on Monday that was well attended. The commoditization of video security continues, and all key vendors are showing serious efforts to diversify away from the traditional CAS/DRM model.
Custos did not exhibit this year and I spent my time “walking the floor”. I did manage to spend some time talking to Colin Dixon of nscreenmedia and he was sufficiently intrigued to report on this in his post-IBC blog. Our ability to combine watermarking with digital tokens distributed via blockchain and using the bounty hunter community to assist in anti-piracy activities is seen as a novel and very interesting concept. I did manage to speak to several players that are seriously looking at the evolving Web3 environment and how it will impact our industry. I expect that we will hear much more about this soon.
Fortunately for me, as I am based in Amsterdam, I was not impacted by any travel challenges. This was unfortunately not the same for many others. On Friday the event started with some rain and a national rail strike and on Monday the event ended with a shortage of security staff at Schiphol airport, causing chaos, long delays and for some, flight cancellations. So logistically, IBC 2022 was a challenge. Next year better?
Before the event, most people I spoke to had mixed expectations for the event and I for one was pleasantly surprised by the long queues waiting to pick up their entry tickets on Friday morning. Although IBC management reported a 34% drop in attendance (from September 2019), both Friday and Saturday were busy (keeping in mind that fewer halls were used, and some halls were smaller). Sunday was less busy, and Monday was the typical slower last day.
There was a good positive buzz amongst attendees and in the levels of meetings were mostly good. Definitely fewer “tire kickers” around this year! Maybe this good feeling simply reflected the ability to meet in person again. As they say - the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and we will have to see if this positive mood results in real deals over the coming months.
