AI, China, Spain and France, key players at 4K HDR Summit 2024

• Artificial Intelligence and its revolutionary impact on production and the audiovisual industry will be one of the main topics to be discussed by experts from around the world at the 4K HDR Summit

• While Spain and France lead the development of UHD technology in Europe, China leads the world in the adoption and development of 8K

• Seville, from November 11 to 14, will bring together the world’s UHD experts on the occasion of the X edition of the 4K HDR Summit, which this year also coincides with the 21st edition of the Seville European Film Festival

China, as well as Spain and France, two countries of reference in the implementation in Europe of Ultra High Definition (UHD) in Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), will be, along with Artificial Intelligence, major protagonists of the 4K HDR Summit, “Where technology and content have time to talk“, which will once again turn Seville into the annual epicenter of the international audiovisual industry from November 11 to 14 during two days (Monday 11 and Tuesday 12) at the Cartuja Auditorium and two virtual days (13 and 14), coinciding with the 21st edition of the Seville European Film Festival.

AI drives the audiovisual industry

Generative Artificial Intelligence is going to have a huge impact on the audiovisual industry, helping to cut production costs and accelerating the creation processes and, above all, improving productivity so far known. AI is one of the main axes on which the audiovisual sector revolves and the 4K HDR Summit will become a stage where world experts in Ultra High Definition (UHD) from more than 15 countries will talk about all the advances around it.

Among the many companies, associations and institutions present that will talk about AI will be the Andalusian regional television RTVA, represented by Juanma Blanco Poley, Director Canal Sur Media, who will share the experiences that are being carried out with Artificial Intelligence in CanalSur Media, an area of the company nestled in the direction of Innovation, Business and Communication.

For its part, the UHD Spain association will present a preview of its pilot experience in the application of AI in the audiovisual industry, with the participation of Iván López, RTVE filmmaker; Emili Planas, CTO of Grup Mediapro; Sonia Valladares of Dolby and Xavier Bonet, of 3Cat. In addition, José Manuel Menéndez, professor at the Universidad Politécnica Madrid, will be in charge of presenting the 3rd edition of the UHD Spain White Paper. During his speech, Menéndez will talk about what has been added in this new edition of the book, which includes a new foreword, new contributors, a discussion on the nature of the UHD signal, use of AI to measure subjective quality QoE in video, new contributions on interchange formats, and information on international standards for receivers.

China, world leader in 8K content

Precisely China will be another major player in the 4K HDR Summit. The Asian giant will participate for the first time in this summit by the hand of the two most important UHD associations in the country: the UHD World Association (UWA), represented by Liqiang Zhao, Global Content Partnership at HUAWEI; and the Sichuan UHD Video Alliance (SUVA), represented by Cao Ju, Executive Secretary General of the association.

China is positioning itself as a world leader in the adoption and development of 8K, mainly in the creation of content and construction of the necessary network infrastructure to support this new era in visual quality. Not surprisingly, in the Asian giant there are already several 4K channels and there is already an 8K channel from China Media Group that is set to lead the way for the new generation.

Spain, at the forefront of UHD

Within the work being done worldwide in the creation of content and construction of the network infrastructure necessary to sustain this new era in visual quality, Europe is evolving at a good pace with a leader at the forefront: Spain. Our country is leading the deployment of UHD at the European level. In fact, it can boast of having the first broadcaster in the world (RTVE) that regularly broadcasts the programming of its main public television channel in Ultra High Definition in DTT. The public broadcaster will be represented at the 4K UHD Summit by José Luis Muñiz, Director of Studies and Technical Means; Víctor Sánchez, Director of Media and Operations at RTVE and Ángel García Castillejo, Director of Audiovisual Policies at RTVE.

From our national territory there are many companies that will participate in this global summit. Among them, Vicomtech, represented by senior researcher Ana Dominguez, who will present the challenges and applications in audiovisual production of volumetric video, a promising and booming technology due to the popularization of Extended Reality (XR) applications. The list of participants will include companies such as the Spanish Hispasat, headed by Jorge Rodríguez, Product and Marketing Manager; or high-level Spanish speakers such as Xavier Redón, Product Manager at Cellnex and Lluís Ribes, Sales Engineering Director at MediaKind, among others.

Without leaving Spain, the engineering company MoMe will be a double protagonist at the 4K HDR Summit in Seville with a first intervention with Deloitte in which both companies will share how they take advantage of the synergy and extensive experience of Deloitte and MoMe in the Digital Transformation and Technological Evolution of their sector. Jaime Herbada, Chief Operating Officer at MoMe, and Javier Martínez, Broadcast Engineering Lead | Technology & Transformation at Deloitte, will talk about how Cloud, Data Management and Artificial Intelligence are the right levers to activate a ‘Change-Ready’ operation, allowing their “clients to navigate in a changing technological environment in an economically efficient and sustainable way”.

MoMe will also present exclusively at the 4K HDR Summit together with Synamedia the first high performance CDN service in Spain to address the need for high availability and quality in the delivery of high value or premium video services. Robin Oakley, Senior Director & Edge CDN Solutions at Synamedia, together with Jaime Herbada, Chief Operating Officer at MoMe, will discuss the “unmet need in the market for latency and quality of experience (QoE) that are essential for high-value video services such as UHD/4K”.

France, a bright future for UHD in Europe

Along with Spain, France is the other European country that is making the most progress in terms of the development and implementation of UHD technology in DTT. According to experts, the future of UHD in Europe is bright, although its speed of deployment will depend on advances in telecommunications infrastructure, the development of more content in resolutions generated in 4K and 8K or lower costs. The French country will be represented at the 4K HDR Summit by the Director of France TV, Jacques Donat-Bouillud, and Mickaël Raulet, CTO of Ateme, the French world leader specialized in the development of technological solutions for the compression, transmission and distribution of high quality video.

They will not be the only ones, as this summit will also be attended by Anaïs Libolt, director of broadcast and content in Europe at Dolby, who will be responsible for unpacking the essential work that this American company has played in the “evolution of more realistic and immersive experiences” taking advantage of technologies such as HDR with Dolby Vision and immersive audio with Dolby Atmos; or Benjamin Schwarz, from Greening of Streaming, who will share the “first available data on the energy impact that UHD technologies – such as HDR or higher resolutions – will or will not have within the workflow, whether or not they are sustainable”.

Likewise, Olivier Chiabodo, CEO of The Explorers, will share all the work his production company does in creating and recording content in UHD 4K HDR / 8K HDR around the world, including China, where he has been working since 2019, especially with the UWA, the Ultra High Definition World Association. “Content is king and the industry needs that content,” Olivier Chiabodo advances.

The conferences of the 4K HDR Summit 2024 can be followed on Medina Media Events’ ‘The Observatory’ and will be available 24/365. On this platform, attendees can also schedule video meetings with other participants and speakers, in addition to exclusive virtual demonstrations.

The tenth edition of the 4K HDR Summit is organized by Medina Media Events and has the support of the Digital Agency of Andalusia (ADA), Dolby, MOME, Vicomtech, Canal Sur Radio and Television, EVS, Synamedia, Fraunhofer IIS, Axion, Mediakind, Ateme, AJA, Hispasat, Quantum, Cellnex, Eutelsat, Rohde & Schwarz, Canon, Sapec, AEQ, Gsertel and UHD Spain, among others.