Three of the speakers at this years' BroadThinking: Thomas Stockhammer (Qualcomm), Reinhard Grandl (Bitmovin), Patrick Gendron (Harmonic)
Get ready for the ninth episode of BroadThinking, 26-27 March at EBU HQ in Geneva, when the EBU's principle event for OTT technologies will once again weave a narrative around the theme of online delivery. Assembling specialists from around the world, this year's BroadThinking kicks off with a keynote from Manuel Gómez Zotano, Director of Interactive Technology at Spanish public broadcaster RTVE. Zotano will explain how his organization's teams are pushing the envelope of available technologies.
Front-end and AI
Broadthinking covers both application and distribution topics, and day 1 kicks-off with a look at what matters most to audiences: Quality of Experience (QoE), and the front-end. For example, Reinhard Grandl from Bitmovin will be telling participants not only about what keeps the makers of players up at night, but also provide a detailed list of technical developments on the horizon that broadcasters should be ready for.
Patrick Gerdon of Harmonic will be talking about AI and how it can be leveraged to optimize stream performance when applied to improve a telcos' network distribution capabilities. Looking at similar technologies, Phil Cluff from Mux will explain how machine learning (ML) can facilitate per stream encoding by using it select the ideal bandwidth for a given user experience.
5G, CDNs and the role of telcos
Day 2 then zooms in on several distributions topics. Qualcomm's Director of Technical Standards Thomas Stockhammer will be taking a close look at 5G and how, and when, future mobile broadband technology might change the OTT game. Presentations on satellite distribution for online content delivery, the importance of telco networks, and the usefulness of blockchain technology in OTT are also on the agenda.
The events will also look at trends that surfaced at BroadThinking 2018 – the use of multiple Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), build-your-own-CDN, and solutions that use a combination of the two. Nivedita Nouvel and Guillaume Bichot from Broadpeak will show how Multi-CDN can increase Quality of Experience, while Martin Schmalohr from IRT and Bram Tullemans from EBU will present an extensive overview of "behavioral differences" of various CDNs.
Last but not least, participants will also receive an update on the progress of relevant technical specifications in the space.
Learning from peers
BroadThinking is set up to let engineers engage with other specialists in their field. Participants will also be able to talk face to face with the teams behind solutions that are part of the demonstrations area: the PEACH team will demonstrate new functionalities of their co-developed personalization platform; Eurovision Flow will showcase its single management layer to control a Multi-CDN setup; and Broadpeak provides a test setup showing how QoE is improved with multi-CDN technology.