IBC: Broadcasting awards focus on consumers

The annual IBC awards this year have focused on new technologies for consumers.

The International Broadcasting Convention’s CEO Michael Crimp said the industry was changing, with new delivery platforms and business models expanding on the foundation of the long history of broadcasting.

“This year our awards have really reflected these changes, taking us right into the home with new ways of discovering and enjoying the finest content,” he said.

This year’s honours went to companion apps and asset management, the latest in home content delivery, an 80-year history of ground-breaking broadcast developments, cutting edge research and the best in exhibition stand design. 

The President of Japanese public broadcaster and ABU member NHK, Masayuki Matsumoto, was at the conference in Amsterdam to accept the IBC International Honour for Excellence for NHK’s Science and Technology Research Laboratories (STRL) for developments over more than 80 years. 

He said he had a firm belief in research and development and it was an honour to receive the award on behalf of all the engineers at NHK.

The IBC Innovation Award for Content Creation went to FX UK for its companion app for The Walking Dead. The Award for Content Management was won by the American motor sport NASCAR with Telestream, in association with Promise Technology and Quantum, for developing a “compact and powerful” system which put control of multiple video replays into the hands of race officials. The Award for Content Delivery went to 4oD, the video-on-demand service from Channel 4 in the UK

The IBC2012 Judges’ Prize went to the Framework for Interoperable Media Services, a collaboration led by the Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which jump-started the process of agreeing file exchange standardisation.

The IBC2012 Best Conference Paper Award for a technical paper which best communicates cutting-edge research was won by a team from the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications Heinrich Hertz Institute for their paper on auto-stereoscopic television - 3D without glasses.

The three IBC2012 Exhibition Design Awards were won by Marvell Semiconductors, Netgem and SES.

(Source : Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union)