Wednesday 28 February 2018

Late addition to the prestigeous line-up of speakers

We only got confirmed yesterday that Olivier Wellmann, Vice President of Product Management at Conviva will be joining our prestigious line-up of speakers at our 2018 Spring Conference on 'The Future of TV'.

Conviva develops and markets an AI platform for intelligent video measurement and analytics for the over-the-top market. Customers include more than a hundred of the top publishers globally.
 
Olivier’s team looks after Product Management, Developer Community, Product Partnerships, Program Management, and Documentation across the quality of experience and user engagement products, advertising solutions, as well as the device ecosystem development for the Conviva solution globally.  
 
Previously, Olivier was Vice President Product Development for the Middleware, UEX, and Multi-Screens Products at Nagra Kudelski. He was responsible for driving products, partner strategies, and well-crafted polished User Interface including next-generation hyper-connected media-convergence solutions.
 
Olivier was also VP of the Advanced Advertising solutions at OpenTV (now Imagine Communications). Over the years, he held Product Management, Marketing, and Business Development positions. 

Thursday 22 February 2018

Matt Stagg, EE, will be a speaking at 'The Future of TV'

Another highlight of our 'The Future of TV' conference is Matt Stagg, Head of Media and Entertainment Technology of EE.


Matt has over 25 years’ experience in telecoms, media and entertainment and was recently voted in the top 50 most influential people in online TV for the fourth year running. In 2017, he was awarded the TV Connect People’s Choice award for the ‘Person who made the biggest impact on the connected entertainment industry’.
 
Within EE he is Head of Media & Entertainment Technology, developing the strategy for the Broadcast, Media & Entertainment over 4G / LTE-B & 5G This encompasses a ‘glass to glass’ approach incorporating both contribution and distribution of media.
 
Matt is also the Founder and Chairman of the Mobile Video Alliance and co-founder of the LTE-Broadcast Global Alliance.

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Matt Locke, Founder of Storythings speaking at 'The Future of TV'

We are proud to introduce Matt Locke as another key speaker at our 2018 Spring conference on 'The Future of TV'.


Matt Locke is a digital storyteller, founder of Storythings and an expert in the role of new tech in media development, having led ground-breaking innovation projects at the BBC and Channel 4. He’s currently researching the history of how we measure attention – from applause in 19th century music halls to the digital networks of today. With Storythings, he has told the story of many multidisciplinary projects, from Gruff Rhy’s American Interior to How We Get To Next , an online magazine highlighting emerging innovation to accompany Steven Johnson’s PBS series. He also curates The Story conference, which shares the weird and wonderful world of storytelling.
 
Before starting Storythings, Matt worked in digital media for over 15 years, including 7 years as Head of Innovation at BBC New Media, where he led many ground-breaking open data projects, including Backstage, Innovation Labs, and the BBC/Yahoo Hackday.
 
He then went to Channel 4 in 1997 to lead their Education dept, commissioning crossplatform projects for 14-19 yr olds, including the double-Emmy winning www.battlefront.co.uk. Before leaving Channel 4 to start Storythings, he was Head of Multiplatform, running the team that developed projects including Million Pound Drop, Big Brother, Skins and Misfits.

Tuesday 20 February 2018

Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy, BBC, to speak at our 2018 Spring conference

We are very much looking forward to welcoming Vinoba Vinayagamoorthy, BBC R&D Engineer, to our 2018 Spring conference on 'The future of TV'.

Vinoba is an R&D Engineer within Broadcast & Connected Systems. She mostly walks/runs/floats around trying to think up new types of synchronised companion screen experiences for connected homes.

Please read her full profile here.

Tuesday 13 February 2018

Alan Charmers, Professor at the University of Warwick to speak at the 'Future of TV' conference

Another speaker highlight at our conference on 'The Future of TV' will be Alan Charmers, Professor of Visualisation at WMG, University of Warwick, UK and formerly a Royal Society Industrial Fellow.

Alan has published over 245 papers and supervised 47 PhD students. Chalmers is founder and scientific adviser of the spinout company of trueDR Ltd. He has been active in UHD research and development for over 15 years and currently leads a team of 6 researchers investigating many aspects of the field, and especially HDR.
 
He is Honorary President of Afrigraph, a former Vice President of ACM SIGGRAPH, and was a member of the Technical Advisory Board of Brightside, the HDR display pioneers. In addition, Chalmers was Chair of EU COST Action “IC1005 HDR” that co-ordinated HDR research across Europe to facilitate its widespread uptake and he is currently a UK representative on IST/37 considering the incorporation of HDR and WCG in MPEG.

At the conference he will be talking about  High Quality Compression for Displays of the Future

High Dynamic Range (HDR) displays offer the potential of showing images which are much richer in detail in the dark and bright areas of a scene compared to a traditional, Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) display. Current consumer HDR OLED displays have a peak luminance of approximately 700cd/m2 (or nits) while backlit LCD HDR displays currently have peak luminances of about 2,000nits.
 
Despite all the commercial interest in HDR, it is still not possible to fully appreciate the dynamic range when viewing HDR content on either of these types of display in normal ambient light conditions. Instead HDR content has to be viewed in a dark, and indeed preferably pitch-black room. This problem is exacerbated when viewing the content on mobile devices “on the go” and thus, potentially, in constantly changing ambient light conditions.
 
Brighter HDR displays are appearing. SIM2 showed a 10,000nit display at IBC2016, while Sony announced a 10,000nit display at CES2018. Mobile displays too are getting brighter with the Samsung Galaxy S8 having a peak luminance of over 1,000nits. Current HDR video compression methods, such as HDR10 and HLG have only been designed to minimise visual artefacts for displays of < 4,000nits and, furthermore, are not able to adapt to changing ambient lighting conditions.
 
In this talk he discusses the need for new approaches to HDR video compression which are efficient, able to cope with the brighter displays of the future, and can adapt not only to changing ambient lighting, but also to the mood of the content, to always ensure an enhanced viewing experience.
 
 

Monday 12 February 2018

Ed Haslam of Conviva to speak at the 'Future of TV' Conference

We are absolutely delighted to have Ed Haslam, Chief Marketing Officer of Conviva as speaker at our 'Future of TV' Conference.

Ed is a strategic marketing executive with experience in digital media, network infrastructure and enterprise software. Ed has been the founding marketing executive of many other venture-backed technology companies, responsible product launch, company, and brand, along with developing the channel to market, building international teams and overall corporate strategy.

In this presentation, Ed will discuss a deep-dive analysis of European OTT consumption, expanding upon Conviva’s recent global Continuous Measurement Annual Census which saw significant growth in viewing hours and plays over the previous year.
 
Conviva’s footprint spans more than 180 countries, all global CDNs, in excess of 1200 global ISPs, and over 2100 video app types. Important viewing insights will include a global comparison of plays, unique devices, and total hours by region, and a comparison of data viewing time, total plays, average minutes per ended play, and average completion rate for European countries. We will also review trends around consumer behaviour related to devices, browser, and application usage for video viewing.
 
 

Tuesday 6 February 2018

Anders Erlandsson, Ericsson, to speak at 'Future of TV', March 6/7

It is getting better and better! We now have Anders Erlandsson's secured as speaker for our 2018 Spring Conference on 'Future of TV'.

As Senior Advisor at Ericsson ConsumerLab, Anders Erlandsson is responsible for analysing consumer behaviour, attitudes and trends to provide valuable and actionable consumer insights and forecasts and thereby develop strategies that generate revenue and improve the customer experience.
 
Anders joined Ericsson in 1991. He has been a frequent speaker and panellist at numerous industry conferences and customer events. He has worked extensively with consumer insights is areas such as social media, privacy & integrity, mobile commerce and last but not least TV & media. In his TV & Media research, more than 120 000 consumers have been interviewed since 2010, in 34 markets globally. The latest edition of the report alone, represents the views of more than 1 billion consumers.
 
Anders Erlandsson is based in Stockholm, Sweden and has previously held various Product Management, Business Development, Sales and Marketing positions in Sweden and in the UK. He holds an MSc in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Linköping Institute of Technology, Sweden.

 

Thursday 1 February 2018

Simon Parnall, Ofcom, confirmed as speaker for 'The Future of TV' Conference


We are very pleased to have Simon Parnall, Principal Advisor Broadcast Technology for OFCOM, speaking at the 2018 Spring conference on 'The Future of TV'!

Simon will speak about the opportunities and challenges facing the industry, look at some of the prevalent myths, and consider the real needs of our citizens and consumers.
 
We are looking forward to interesting viewpoints and discussions.

Simon Parnall has been Principal Advisor Broadcast Technology for OFCOM since 2016. Previously Simon worked in Broadcast Research and Development, latterly for NDS as UK Vice President and for Cisco as Distinguished Engineer, and formerly for BBC R&D at Kingswood Warren.
 
His work has primarily been in the creation and worldwide standardisation of new television and radio technologies, and he has led a number of European and Worldwide initiatives.
 
Simon is married with one teenage son. He is also a borough councillor, church organist and keen hill walker.