Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to AV in the Wild, the podcast that dives deep into the heart of the pro AV industry. Out in the field, on the move and in the moment.
Hi, I'm Sam, I'm from Worldwide Plus.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm here today reporting for AV in The Wild from IBC 2025.
We'll be looking at what's hot in.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: The world of broadcast, all the top trends and the all important topic of AV broadcast convergence.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: So, enough from me, I'm going to throw it over to our team of reporters on the show floor to tell.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: You what's going on.
[00:00:34] Speaker C: Hey Everybody here at IBC 2025. And I've stepped over to the VTech booth to grab actually an old friend of mine, Colin Farquhar. Colin, how's the show going for you?
[00:00:43] Speaker D: Neil, nice to see you again after all these years. Yeah, the show's going really well. It's been a really busy morning for us.
We occupy a kind of strange space within the broadcast market in the sense that we're as much of a pro AV business as we are a broadcast business.
So here at the show it's quite interesting. We have lots of, obviously our customers who come who are using our technology as part of their broadcast workflows, but we also have a lot of our customers, end users here, a lot of the broadcasters who are using our IPTV systems for their internal distribution applications. It's a really interesting range of things that we get to do here at the show. One of the shows I really, really enjoy.
[00:01:19] Speaker C: It's been a while since I've been in the world of ip, multicast and IPTV and everything like that.
What's changed? What is the new trends? Where is the direction of the industry going around that.
[00:01:28] Speaker D: So IP is clearly becoming the dominant way of distributing and delivering content.
So one of the things that we're seeing is that the gradual transition of people away from what I say, some of the DVB type distributions to more of an IP distribution and combining those elements together, we've seen that being quite a big or emerging as quite a big opportunity in this space.
We've responded to that. We've got a really interesting, essentially routing product that allows us to bring content from different locations over IP to an IP gateway that we can then combine with our broadcast DVB ingest products. So that's an area that's really moving forward. Of course, if I put my Pro Avon hat on, we combine that then with digital signage and other elements to create the full experience within your facilities.
[00:02:18] Speaker C: I was going to say, because we were talking again. The last time I came to IBC was years and years ago. It was all around broadcast trucks and again it was DVB backhaul over ip. But the world of Pro AV seems to be merging again. Are you seeing more requests than that? You seeing Pro AV coming into the broadcast space and taking it?
[00:02:35] Speaker D: Yeah. So, I mean, as a company, we've always had a kind of interest in both broadcast and av. So many of our channel partners will be pro AV companies, but they will have broadcast division so they have an understanding of broadcast. What we're seeing is more of those AV companies exploring what broadcast means and exploring how they can exploit it with the knowledge they have of ip. Some of the challenges that we're facing is that of course, the broadcast space is often much more demanding. You know, if I'm not that this happens with my products, but, you know, if someone's watching a live TV feed within their office in reception and a couple of frames disappear, okay, nobody cares. But if I'm a broadcaster and I've got a broadcast going out and I start to lose frames or lose sync, so the demands around it can be much more demanding. And so one of the things I feel at the moment is that the Pro AV space has to educate itself more. And that's a challenge. You know, you've got to. And hopefully I was talking with Avixa when I was at the integrated show in Australia, and they were emphasizing that, you know, this is an area that they feel, you know, the AV market, the AV broadcast, AV Pro market could expand its capabilities and training is an important part of that.
[00:03:49] Speaker C: Now the other markets, again, ISE is the other big show and again, that's growing in traction, of course, that bridges the world of AV and UC and video conferencing. Is there anything that the world of UC can learn from broadcast? You know, quality and as you say, the reliability of, you know, getting the stuff over again, what can you. If someone's doing more VC stuff, maybe working from home hybrid, what can they. What best practices can they take from the world of broadcast?
[00:04:15] Speaker D: So certainly we're seeing a lot of content coming in that's been combined with the UC product set and environment. And certainly we see a lot of situations where people are wanting to, you know, bring event content in and use the UC infrastructure to get that content out. So things like ndi, with Microsoft bringing that content and making it almost a native part of the UC infrastructure, those types of things we're seeing more and more of. Certainly one of the things, I guess Broadcast, you're publishing, you're pushing out to lots of people simultaneously. And so that's an area certainly we look at our own products. We're encoding low latency distribution of material multi site, doing that in a very efficient way.
Sometimes that can be a better way than distribute content than through the UC infrastructure. But the two of them combined can really provide a great infrastructure for communications within their organization.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: So you guys launching anything new for IBC 2025?
[00:05:12] Speaker D: Yes. So we have alongside a range of IPTV encoding, decoding, distribution products, digital signage.
This year at the show we're showing our new video processing products. So we have two products. One is more of an appliance type.
So we drive video walls, multiple screens to a video wall and more of a scalable product that allows us to manage and deliver content from a variety of sources to much larger scale video wall environments. We see a lot of video wall requirements within our typical IPTV applications. And so that's been a very important addition to our portfolio.
[00:05:47] Speaker C: LED is growing huge. You look around this boot, every single booth has now got an LED on there and it's, you know, the cost I think is coming down on that and the technology is getting a lot better on that. So again I think there's really growing traction. Absolutely. In the industry.
[00:05:59] Speaker D: Absolutely agree.
[00:06:00] Speaker C: Now where can people find out more information about VTech and all the great new products you got?
[00:06:04] Speaker D: So the best thing to do is to go to our website, www.vtechvitec.com and start there, find about the products. If you want to contact us, hit that connect button and talk to us and we'll do what we can to assist you with your IPTV encoding, signage, video wall, anything you want, just give me a call.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: Hey Everybody here at IBC 2025. And it wouldn't be an IBC without coming over to. Well, for me it's where I all started. My second job probably outside of school was with this company back in 1997 and with this man and his legacy of his father, Richard. It's great to see you guys here at IBC 2025. How's the show for you?
[00:06:45] Speaker E: Super awesome to see you. Neil, I mean is still part of our induction. Everybody hears about Neil and how he taught me about subnets and told me I wasn't allowed to use a mouse, to use a computer, use your keystrokes.
[00:06:56] Speaker C: I mean more efficient.
[00:06:58] Speaker E: Yeah. So we're here at ibc third year of exhibiting, we're about doing cloud properly, tier one workflows, low level video manipulation. Functions built to try and achieve the type of performance that we expected as an industry and was available in hardware 10 years ago. But we feel too many shortcuts have been taken as organizations have moved to software propositions and the cloud. So we're trying to do it properly.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: I mean that is the trouble I guess. I think people do shortcut stuff in software and there is some real challenges. And again, when it comes to broadcast, it's got to work. It's not mission critical. Again, in my world of uc, if you drop some frames and drop some packets it's like.
But in the world of broadcast, that's a fireable offense.
[00:07:39] Speaker E: Yeah, absolutely. And it's about standards and precision and I just think, you know, actually it gets harder as you move to the cloud. Cause you're on shared compute.
You know, FPGAs these walled gardens that you know, the legacy software was all built for. It's more straightforward than on shared compute. And so what we're trying to achieve is that same type of tolerance that the industry expected and achieved in fpga, but on shared compute.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Now you guys are launching so many new products here at ibc. Can you give us a whistle stop tour over the sort of top highlights?
[00:08:06] Speaker E: Oh gosh, don't want to leave anything out. So IBC last year we were probably sharing something like 25 functional modules.
We're now, I think we're talking about 50, 60 modules in play. But if you look at the UI you're actually going to see over 100. So that's the modules that aren't GA and released yet. But kind of highlights from the show are we introducing excess encoding and decoding TR0742 10 bit AVC format conversion with our partners in sync video keying and graphics keying audio down mix.
And that's adding to what we announced and showed. Well with Darwin over the last couple of years. So seamless splicing as a redundancy function to be able to seamlessly transition between diverse encoded immutable infrastructure as you start to want to destroy infrastructure as part of your upgrade cycles. And a full end to end SCTE 35 manipulation suite.
[00:09:00] Speaker C: Crikey. And you said that you were going to be good at this. You reeled off a whole bunch of stuff. Now if people are coming down to ibc, tell us where the booth is. Where can they see all this great stuff?
[00:09:09] Speaker E: Oh gosh. So this is Hall 2 right at the front back where some amazing technology has been demonstrated over the years. We know talking back 15, 20 years ago when I was a young thing and you were teaching me what to do.
So yeah, come by, we'd love to see you. We'd love to talk about what we're doing, how we're disrupting the industry. Yeah.
[00:09:29] Speaker C: And if you're catching this after the show or if you can't come to Amsterdam, I guess there's a website.
[00:09:33] Speaker E: There is a website. TechX TV and we're UK based company, pretty big in the US. It's probably our biggest market now. But yeah, come on the website, give us a ring. Come and see us in Pracnel.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: Hey everybody, I'm here at IBC 2025 and I've come over to the ABSA booth to grab Debbie who is General Manager of ABSEN. Debbie, how's IBC 2025 been for you so far?
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Yeah, IBC actually is great. Today is the first day and we can see some old friends come to see us and had very, very nice conversations with our customers and yes partners today already the morning is very busy.
[00:10:11] Speaker C: Now the interesting thing, I've been here for the build up and everywhere I've been in the build up, your ABS and cases, every LED screen around all the halls are abson. So that's congratulations but I wasn't expecting you to be here with an actual booth promoting your products.
So tell me, what are Epson doing for the broadcast industry? How is broadcast using ABSON displays?
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Oh, okay, yes, absent. Actually we do a lot of projects in the broadcasting world. So for example behind me this is our KLCOB product and we use it actually for different segments. We use it for not only conference rooms, we also use it for TV studios, for broadcasting and actually for absence products. We have a quite big portfolio and not only our KLC OB and also our rental products can also be used in broadcasting environment.
So it's not purely a rental product. And for example we use normally 1.9 millimeter, 1.5 millimeter and it for both rental segments as well as broadcasting segments.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: I see. This is a 1.2.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah, this is a 1.2 millimeter. Yes, with really, really true black performance.
[00:11:28] Speaker C: And where is the difference between a customer going from a traditional LCD screen to an led? Is there a size or a technology that means that it's more beneficial to go to an LED versus an old fashioned LCD display?
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Yeah, very good question. Yes indeed. Of course that is also why LED displays is getting more and getting more and more popular in the industry. And honestly speaking, I'm proud to say that LED displays is replacing more and more LCD LFD projectors is because as you can see it's very seamless. You can build as big as the screen you want and also it's very black and it reproduce the really, really.
Yes. Accurate colors you want for the product. And so that is really, really.
Yeah. Very different selling points compared with traditional lcd.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: And I guess the great thing about LED is the modular factor of it. So there's only a. So so big. You can go in a single display and you fit it into a lift or being able to move it around the office.
It's very modular. So you can go as big as you want really and be able to ship it and distribute it around.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So indeed, indeed. Then there is no bottleneck for you to get the screen into the elevator and then you can. Yes, it's modulus and normally our panel size is like 500 by 500. Yeah millimeters or 16:9 ratio to make you a full HD or 4K or 8K. So that is the LED displays can bring you that.
Yes.
Experiences.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: Now while we were waiting to record this, there's a display behind me and I didn't realize this is a touch touch screen. So this touchscreen led, talk us through this.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yes, this is our all in one solution. We call it Epsonicon X series.
So we do have three sizes. So this one is our 110 inch touch solution and we have 130 as you can say 136 inch and 163 inch. So that will be a little bit bigger. Yes, yeah. You can use it for some conference room and also for some broadcasting. For example, for the weather forecast. Yeah. When the, when the host do some forecast for the weather, they can use this. Yes. Yeah.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: Now I was going to ask what can the world of broadcast bring to AV and unified communications and collaboration? Is it things like, you know, the color quality and the, the rendering of accurate colors and the quality of the image that the world of AV and broadcast and unified communications is now coming together and unifying More together.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Actually in the broadcasting environment, the color accuracy, color reproduction is very important for that environment. Especially for the very tier one, the very high end broadcasting environment.
So appson we do have quite a.
A good portfolio to fit our products into that environment.
For example we have at IBC today we launched first time in Europe our PR series together integrated with Deep sky processing which is a very cutting edge technology of color reproduction. Later we can get some introduction about Deep sky and how it is being used in virtual production in broadcasting environment.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: Debbie, thank you ever so much. Amazing products you've got here at ibc. So thank you for taking us on that tour. Is there a website people can go to to find out more about Appson?
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Yeah, Abson. We have apps in Europe and Appson headquarter website. And welcome to. Yeah, Come to our website and have a look.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: Hey, Everybody here at IBC 2025 and we're on the ABS and booth still, but we come off to the side to look at the Deep sky product. I'll grab Anton to take you through and explain exactly what it's about. Antonio, Deep sky, what's it all about?
[00:15:24] Speaker F: So we're a technology company, we partner with Appsen and we broke to IBC this year that beautiful wall of pixel reality, pixel pitch 1.9 built featuring the deep sky video processing pipeline. So it's a controller, the gateway card, but most importantly, the IC driver that is really building that wall to deliver you 19 bits of effective grayscale performance.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: So this really is giving the ultimate in color reproduction and grayscale reproduction for customers that really want that accuracy. Exactly.
[00:15:57] Speaker F: If you're really keen on visual performance for your eye or for a camera, we've got a camera demo here as well.
That's definitely a corner. You should spend some time to look at what we can offer because the color reproduction is by far the most accurate in the LED display market. So you can really be sure that your content colors are reproduced as accurately as it can be measured.
[00:16:20] Speaker C: And again, this is available now, or is this something from the future? Or is it technology that customers can get involved in today?
[00:16:27] Speaker F: It's available. We've already delivered large projects, mainly in the US so far, but hopefully some projects are coming up in Europe as well.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Now, where can people find out more information about Deep sky and what it's all about?
[00:16:38] Speaker F: You can visit our website first, so www.deepskycorp.com one amazing IBC 2025.
[00:16:45] Speaker C: It's been loads and loads of updates from all of the awesome suppliers and really taking a deep dive into the world of convergence podcasts and av. Make sure you follow us. Loads of updates coming for us. The podcast is going out now. Alive. Follow us on all good socials and we'll catch you on the next AV in the Wild.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: That's a wrap on this episode of AV in the Wild. Big thanks to our guests and to you, our listeners, for joining us on this journey through the AV landscape. If you liked what you heard, don't forget to subscribe. Share Leave a Review it helps us keep the conversation going. Catch us next time as we hit the road again with more voices, more stories, and more of what makes AV wild. Until then, stay curious, stay connected, and stay wild.
