IBC: Accelerating Innovation Podcast

Accelerating Innovation Podcast, Ep 13: Ultra Low Latency Live Streaming at Scale

With the impending shutdown of digital terrestrial and satellite television, the industry urgently needs a truly scalable, high-performing TV architecture over an entirely different technology stack. Recorded live from IBC2025, episode 13 of the IBC365 Accelerating Innovation podcast hosted thought-leaders from the ‘Ultra Low Latency Live Streaming at Scale’ project who picked up the gauntlet. Building on the foundation of the previous year’s Scalable Ultra-Low Latency Streaming for Premium Sports accelerator (an L3D-DASH implementation), this project focused on the architecture needed to deliver live TV over the internet, introducing functionality expected from a production DTT channel using new open specifications. The goal was to deliver the same latency, stability, and feature set as digital terrestrial and satellite television.  The Accelerator explored key technical components, including CDN and multicast ABR (mABR) integration, personalised ad insertion, and the use of CMCD v2 (upcoming CTA 5004-A) for Quality of Experience (QoE) monitoring and ad beaconing. The primary objective was to achieve ultra-low latency glass-to-glass delivery, near-instant playback start, and tight synchronisation across multiple viewers on consumer devices.   In this episode, Mark Smith, Lead for the IBC Accelerator Programme, was joined by Piers O'Hanlon, Senior Research and Development Engineer at BBC R&D, and Michael Loftus, Media Streaming Infrastructure Lead at RTÉ.  Live at IBC2025, the project group discussed how they created a low-latency DASH-based streaming system for RTÉ News and a synthetic RTÉ Sports sequence. The team also reflected on how the industry could build on this blueprint of a viable low-latency DTT replacement in the future.

Accelerating Innovation Podcast, Ep 12: Multi-Vendor Software Live Media Exchange

Recorded live from IBC2025, episode 12 of the IBC365 Accelerating Innovation podcast hosted thought-leaders from the ‘Multi-Vendor Software Live Media Exchange’ project.   Most live production environments today remain built around hardware appliances and mixed standards. While live IP cores exist, the ecosystem still depends heavily on proprietary interconnects and fixed devices. This limits agility, scalability, and efficiency at a time when production teams increasingly need to move resources between on-premises facilities, central hubs, and the public cloud.  The ‘Multi-Vendor Software Live Media Exchange’ Accelerator investigated how broadcasters can exchange high-performance video, audio, and data between media functions using generic compute, containerisation, and open interfaces. The aim was to enable low-latency, resilient, and vendor-agnostic live production facilities that can scale dynamically and interoperate across networks and clouds.  In this episode, Keran Boyd, Accelerator Project Lead at IBC, was joined by: David Atkins, CEO of Phrame; Max Smith, Developer at 3ADesign; and Peter Brightwell, Lead R&D Engineer at BBC R&D. Live at IBC2025, the project group discussed how they delivered an iteration of the EBU Media eXchange Layer (MXL)-based containerisation of cloud workflows to allow more efficient compute and interoperability amongst vendors. The team also reflected on the impact of MXL in the broader industry and where this work will go in the future.

Accelerating Innovation Podcast, Ep 11: AI Agent Assistants for Live Production

As broadcasters juggle an unprecedented volume of platforms and live content, control rooms are under growing pressure to merge legacy systems with cutting-edge tech. IBC2025 Accelerator Champions ITN, BBC, and Channel 4 set out to address this challenging situation – issuing a call for a purpose-built ecosystem of AI-driven production agents designed to fundamentally reimagine operators’ interaction with technology and, therefore, the future of live production galleries. Recorded live from IBC2025, episode 11 of the IBC365 Accelerating Innovation podcast hosted thought-leaders from the 2025 IBC Incubator ‘AI Agent Assistants for Live Production’ to find out more.   Inspired by the successful R&D of the 2024 IBC Accelerator named ‘Evolution of the Control Room’, this 2025 project proposed AI-driven production assistants to intelligently integrate into control room workflows and enhance live production through AI-assisted automation. This ambitious consortium set out to tackle the haphazard amalgamation of legacy systems and evolving tech in today’s control rooms by building a "media-first" POC AI Assistant Director orchestrator. Designed from a suite of a dozen customised AI production agents, this system used natural language and voice interaction to simplify control room workflows and speed up decision-making. This Accelerator Project was then live demoed at IBC2025, where visitors had the chance to see how the technology enabled users to focus on the show, rather than the buttons. In this episode, Muki Kulhan, Accelerator Lead at IBC, was joined by: Olivier Barnich, Head of Innovation and Architecture in the R&D department of EVS; Kyle Suess, Co-Founder of Amira Labs; and Chris Abbot, CuePilot Specialist at CuePilot.  The executives dive deep under the hood of their open, vendor-agnostic intelligent control room of agent-to-agent AI, to reveal how they created the system and what it means for the humans who run studio galleries.

Accelerating Innovation Podcast, Ep 10: Changing the Game… Again!

Even faced with a world overflowing with content, users still struggle to find media that appeals to them. Infinite choice has become more exhausting than liberating. To help navigate this maze and increase viewer engagement, this international Accelerator Special Incubator Project leveraged AI and ML to engineer a bespoke system that dynamically shapes content for fans.   Recorded live from IBC2025, episode 10 of the IBC365 Accelerating Innovation podcast hosted thought-leaders from the 2025 IBC Incubator ‘Changing the Game… Again!’ to find out more.   The project built on the success of its predecessor, “Changing the Game: Predictive Generative AI”, in 2024, and set out to construct a fully working, virtual sports companion MVP that used AI edge compute to personalise highlight reels and real-time sports data from a real BFBS football tournament.   This hyper-personalised companion enabled content to be tailored to an individual fan based on their unique preferences and interactions, while custom updates using real-time analytics on teams, players, and matches aligned with the fan's preferences to create a truly immersive and interactive way to consume live and VOD sports content, from anywhere.   In this episode, Muki Kulhan, Accelerator Lead at IBC, was joined by Russell Trafford-Jones, Industry Engagement Manager at IET, Steve Belford, Enterprise Innovation Architect at Channel 4, and Esteban Vazquez, CEO of Tesla Technologies.   The executives chat about the pros and cons of AI in sports production and its impact on fans around the world, as well as learnings in the ethics and responsible uses of AI in personalisation, audience engagement, privacy, and more.

Accelerating Innovation Podcast, Ep 9: Spotlight on Shure – Associate Sponsors

Celebrating the company’s 100th anniversary, associate sponsor Shure shares insight into how it has survived and thrived for over a century by prioritising innovation, diversification, and evolution.  Recorded live from IBC2025, episode nine of the IBC365 Accelerating Innovation podcast hosted thought-leaders from Shure.  The IBC Accelerator Programme brings together leading industry buyers of media technology (Champions) with vendors, suppliers, and developers (Participants) from across the world, in a project-based, accelerated environment for collaborative innovation. The projects develop solutions to common challenges identified by the Champions within a six-month time frame. Shure decided to sponsor the IBC Accelerator Programme as part of its commitment to advancing the media and entertainment sector and empowering engineers, creators, and broadcasters to achieve excellence. In this episode, Muki Kulhan, Accelerator Lead at IBC, was joined by Scott Sullivan, Vice President (VP) of Strategy and Innovation at Shure, and Chad Wiggins, Associate VP of Innovation and Product Management at Shure.  The two Shure executives shared exclusive insights into the technological evolution of the practice of telling stories in sound, the importance of understanding your market, and how the company plans to continue pushing the boundaries of innovation for years to come.