Features

The IBC Accelerator Kickstart Day 2025 marked the beginning of another year of groundbreaking innovation in media and entertainment technology. John Maxwell Hobbs reports.

Multicast Adaptive Bit-Rate streaming has been held up as a way for ISPs and content providers to deliver mass-audience streamed content – particularly live events – while ensuring consistency of experience. BT is meanwhile pushing ahead with the rollout of its MAUD variant of the technology.

Connectivity optimisation, transcription services, and real-time customer support are among the areas of live production where the value of AI-based technologies is increasingly evident, writes David Davies.

AI permeated almost every aspect of ISE 2025 but experts and executives were keen to stress AV’s indivisible role in meshing tech with the art of communication.

Whilst the application of virtual production to big-budget tentpole productions will continue, the maturity of workflows and the development of more technical standards will enable the technology to be applied more widely, writes David Davies.

The application of artificial intelligence in audio is not a recent development, and it’s not coming for our jobs, but it is coming for our audiences. The past year has seen several advances in how AI is impacting audio, and it’s happening on both sides of the production chain, writes Kevin Emmott.

The studio model is being upended by seismic business pressures and the disruptive potency of AI. For two seasoned scriptwriters and producers partnered as Talk Boys Studio, the answer was to create a short film that could be the bellwether for a new wave of narrative generative AI content.

January has only just come to an end, but we are already looking ahead to the next IBC, which takes place as usual at the Amsterdam RAI in September. In the meantime, Content Everywhere companies are polishing their crystal balls and making predictions about what might lie ahead for the video services and streaming industry in the next twelve months.

Films shot on film, fake AI controversy, a collection of CG apes, and a trio of nods to Robbie Williams make the list of nominees for Cinematography, Editing and VFX Academy Awards.

Virtually non-existent before 2019, the term ‘creator economy’ has been on a rocket-like trajectory in recent years. But what exactly is it, and how does it differ from the economies that exist around traditional creative industries like broadcasting and film? John Maxwell Hobbs investigates.