Quantcast
Channel: KIT digital » IBC
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

IBC Retrospective: KIT’s Double Whammy

0
0

KIT digital walked away from IBC with an unbeaten record, winning both the IBC Innovation Award and the CSI (Cable and Satellite International) Award.

The XBox app that KIT created for Channel 4’s 4oD video-on-demand service received the prestigious IBC Innovation Award on Sunday night. The app app extends 4oD to the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console and leverages the Xbox Kinect’s Voice andNatural User Interfaces, allowing users to browse and choose video content using intuitive gesture and voice control.

On Friday, our white label Social Program Guide product beat out three other finalists to garner the CSI Award for Best Social TV Technology, Service or Application. The Social Program Guide or SPG is a second screen app that is a mash-up of an EPG and a remote control with an overlay of social functionality. Because the product is owned by the network operator, the SPG provides the unique ability to change the channel directly from the app, so that users can actually take action on input from their social graph.

The latest upgrade, unveiled at IBC, introduces “T-Commerce” functionality, featuring an ad locker that allows viewers to revisit ads and product placements once they’ve finished watching TV for the evening. Interacting with them on the consumer’s own schedule creates an experience more akin to shopping (which is fun) than watching advertising (which is not.) More on the new SPG in a later blog post.

Other Highlights

KIT’s own awards notwithstanding, the biggest “Wow” moments of the show came from Sony’s 4K UltraHDTV and NHK’s 8K UltraUltraHDTVs.

Remember the first time you saw HDTV in action? Chances are you were pretty blown away by how much better the picture was. Same story with UltraHD. I was expecting a slight improvement. What I saw was pretty incredible. The amount of details was tremendous. (I’ve posted a picture here which gives you something of an idea of what it looks like.

The bad news though is that the availability of 4K or 8K content is a ways off (NHK told me they were thinking 2020 at the earliest.) The market, having just spent thousands on a switchover to flat screen HDTVs is not about to go through another rip and replace cycle. That means the demand (or lack thereof) for UltraHD will limit the amount of content that’s produced in such high quality.

For a while, anyway.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Sony 4K TV
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
NHK 8K TV

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images