Ian Nock

Ultra HD Forum at the Sky Tech Summit 2018 and IBC2018

Sky Tech Summit 2018 – Ever wondered what the Ultra HD Forum actually does?

Well wonder no more if you are attending the Sky Tech Summit 2018. I will be at there as Chair of the Interoperability Working Group of the Ultra HD Forum, supporting the workshop on Redefining the visual experience – advances in UHD and HDR. I will help you understand how the Forum has been working for the last three years to advocate for UHD technologies for consumer entertainment, define best practices and work on resolving technical issues in bringing it all together in a service, and then get into the much more interesting discussion with Chris Johns and Carys Hughes of Sky, Phil Layton of BBC R&D, and Gill Reston of the DPP where we will open the lid on what has been a whole set of exciting developments in HDR in 2018, and the work to look beyond better pixels towards High Frame Rate.

The Ultra HD Forum Masterclass at IBC2018

Of course not everyone is at the Sky Technical Summit, but IBC begins at the end of the week and through no coincidence at all, the Ultra HD Forum has a Masterclass entitled “UHD Take-up in the Field: A year of Olympic and FIFA World Cup success” scheduled in Room G102/G103 of the Rai on Monday from 10:45 to 13:00 that is open to ALL IBC visitors (https://ultrahdforum.org/events/ibc-2018-masterclass-agenda/). I will be there to repeat and add more about what we have been doing alongside many others from the membership and the industry at large.

We have Thierry Fautier, UHDF President and VP Video Strategy for Harmonic welcoming you to the Masterclass.

We have Madeleine Noland and Skip Pizzi giving you the low down on tech and standards used for the 2018 Winter Olympics.

We have learnings from the World Cup with contributions from Stephan Heimbecher of Sky, Dolf Schinkel of KPN, Joerg Sander of HBS, Mickeäl Raulet of ATEME as well as myself.

And finally we finish off with the market perspective on HDR chaired by Maria Rua Aguete of IHS, with contributions from Thierry Fautier, Mike Zink of the UHD Alliance, Adina Gorita of Insight TV, Michel Chabrol of Eutelsat and Yoeri Geutskens otherwise known as @UHD4K.

The Ultra HD Forum Demonstrations at IBC

Even if you are unable to make the Masterclass, then I can recommend that you come along to the Ultra HD Forum stand at 8F.22 in the Future Zone, where the Forum is present providing key demos in UHD technologies including:

  • Consumer Experience – demonstrating the KPN HDR enabled TV service and NASA UHD in HDR and HD via OTT
  • Dynamic HDR
  • Content Aware Encoding for On Demand and Live
  • HFR with Backwards Compatibility – the Interoperability Story
  • Dual Layer Scalable HEVC delivery with Convergence TV

A fun filled few days it will be and I look forward to seeing you there.

Ian Nock is the Founder of Fairmile West, which is a Consulting company focused on working in the Consumer Device and Video arena. We work with clients on technology strategy and product delivery through key practices in Consumer Devices and Video Services. If you are interested in learning more about what we do, please do get in touch via our website – Contact us. You can also keep track with what interests us in the industry by following our Link blog at TV Tech News, and you can specifically follow news on Ultra HD via the following link – Ultra HD News.

Published by Ian Nock

Ian Nock is the Managing Director of Fairmile West Consulting, and has over 25 years experience in high technology research, development, and operations. Since entering the TV industry in the late 1990s, he has worked in the delivery of many Satellite, Cable, IPTV and OTT video platforms across Europe in diverse roles that encompass technology and operations from production to consumption. Ian moved into consulting in 2004 working with some of the most innovative vendor and operator companies in the industry. He founded Fairmile West Consulting (www.fairmilewest.com) in 2012 as a multi-national, high expertise Digital TV and Media consulting and professional services company, working with large/small operators and technology vendors on product/technology strategy, architecture, and delivery. Taking an early interest in the development of Ultra HD, Fairmile West has been a member of the Ultra HD Forum since 2015 and Ian is the Chair of the Ultra HD Forum Interop Working Group. Ian is also the Chair of the IET Multimedia Communications Technical Professional Network. Ian graduated with a First Class Bachelors Degree in Engineering Technology in 1992 from Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University), undertaking research into medical automation, flexible packaging dynamics and post graduate research into artificial intelligence based control systems with a number of published papers in those areas. He quickly jumped out of academia into the nascent Internet and Networking industry before moving into TV. He is a member of the IET, IEEE, RTS and Fellow of the SCTE: The Society for Broadband Professionals. He blogs at http://fairmilewest.com, on LinkedIn and can be found on Twitter at @iannock.