AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 92 - (Page 16)

Content & convenience coming to small screens Until now, most of the convergence talk going on between the broadcast and mobile industry seems to be happening inside the trade show business. Today, traditional broadcast shows like NAB and IBC would be unthinkable without stands from mobile operators. Yet the language spoken by those in the mobile world is still full of jargon that few broadcasters really understand. Jonathan Marks wandered the halls of IBC in search of relevant mobile technologies for broadcasters. L ast year’s IBC Mobile Zone 2006 in Amsterdam was clearly ‘work in progress’. Though double the size of the previous year, it is still basically a glorified corridor space between the main broadcast exhibition halls. Although everyone we spoke to agrees that the future will be driven by compelling content, we’re still at the very early stages of working out how broadcasters will integrate ‘mobile’ into a broadcast station workflow. The picture is complicated by the fact that the definition of mobile at these shows has already broadened beyond just phones. It now means ‘mobile handheld devices’, including Wi-Fi enabled portable video recorders, as well as Skype enabled communicators. The revenues from broadcast/ mobile strategies are still minute and the business models far from clear. There have even been some spectacular failures, like ESPN’s announcement that its mobile wireless sports service has cosed. Yet, there is still a tremendous push from investors to move, somehow, into the mobile sector. IBC’s Mobile Zone was clearly focused on the distribution of content. But in other halls, we found evidence that important acquisition and content management issues are on agendas too. For without an integrated set of tools, making compelling content becomes almost impossible. Acquisition on Mobiles Several companies have been looking at ways to help both professional and amateur reporters quickly capture audio, video or text in the field. As cameras in smartphones improve, so ways are being developed to allow users to capture and publish in a simple two-step process. In this regard, the trials by the Dutch research organization, TNO in Delft, are interesting. They have been trialing software with newspaper journalists using mobile phones for collecting stories. 16 Photos and short audio quotes are easily uploaded to a central server. The difference with the TNO ‘Farcast’ project is that geolocation tags are automatically added to the content, showing when and where photos were made. This makes it possible to search for photos and stories made at particular location, either to verify shots from multiple sources or map stories about a district. Something like ‘Show me crime stories in this neighbourhood over the last year’ would be useful if you were planning to buy a new house. Some media

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 92

Larger than life
Mediatech Aftrica shines bright in local market
HD camcorder runs with the wild dogs
Divers Down pursues tapeless workflow
Broadcast industy feedback

AV Specialist - Africa Edition Vol 92