IBC 2015: As with the IABM’s set of awards, this year’s IBC Awards reflected the interest in IP and IT production technologies at the organisation’s Amsterdam trade show and conference.

The IBC Innovation Awards are given in three categories: Content Creation, Content Management and Content Delivery.

The Content Creation Award went to Channel 4’s The Singer Takes It All, for its app-centric focus. The app allowed potential contestants to audition for the show and viewers to vote in real time during the show to choose a winner.

Technical partners were Endemol Shine Group, Chunk, Tectonic Interactive and Electoral Reform Society.

Content Creation Highly Commended winners were BBC Local Radio for ViLoR (Virtualised Local Radio) and the National Basketball Association’s NBA Replay Center.

The Innovation Award for Content Management went to ESPN for its Digital Center 2, billed as the first large-scale, fully Ethernet-connected production facility in the world. Digital Center 2 includes five studios, 16 edit suites, and six control rooms. Technical partners were Arista Networks, Evertz and Vizrt.

Highly Commended entries included Dock10’s Innovative Remote Operations, SBS Broadcasting’s Film Soundtrack Adaptation, and Disney/ABC Television’s Video-Over-IP for Content Distribution.

The Content Delivery Award was received by Sundance Channel Global for regionalising TV Channels with technical partners Amagi Media Labs. AMC Networks solved the challenge of tailoring its voluminous Spanish-language content for Portuguese-speaking Brazil by developing a system which stored replacement content in the cloud, triggered with watermarked break bumpers.

It allowed for seamless workflow between AMC in New York, playout partner Telefonica in Spain and local satellite distributor Sky Brazil.

High Commendation went to Pac-12 Networks IP for Live Sports Production and Norkring’s DAB+ Towards FM Shut Off.

IBC’s International Honour for Excellence has in past years gone to individuals, including James Cameron, Sir David Attenborough, and Peter Jackson. This year the award was given to a corporation, ARM, whose reduced instruction set computing (RISC) technology is inside roughly one-third of all intelligent electronic devices.

The world’s first commercial RISC processor was launched 30 years ago by Acorn Computer Group. In 1990 the project, on which Acorn and Apple were collaborating, formed the basis for a new company, Advanced RISC Machines or ARM.

“Mobile devices have proved a disruptive, transformative technology for the electronic media industry,” said IBC Council chair Peter Owen. “Smartphones and tablets owe their existence to RISC processors.”

The winner for the Best Conference Paper went to Andrew Cotton and Tim Borer of BBC Research & Development for their paper “A Display Independent High Dynamic Range Television System”, which delineates an approach to presenting HDR content on any type of display.

The IBC Judges Prize went to the IOC’s Patrimonial Asset Management, for its work on conserving and managing the archives of the International Olympic Committee.

Exhibition Design Awards go to outstanding exhibitor spaces on the show floor. The Most Imaginative Use of Shell Scheme Space went to Rosco, the Best Smaller Free Design Stand went to Es’HailSat and the Best Larger Free Design Stand was given to Vizrt.

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