Colorfront (www.colorfront.com) – the Academy, Emmy and HPA Award-winning developer of high-performance dailies and transcoding systems for motion pictures, broadcast, OTT and commercials – will showcase the powerhouse capabilities of its products to enable color-consistent 4K/6K/8K SDR/HDR acquisition-to-post workflows during the 2020 HPA Tech Retreat, 17-20 Feb, Rancho Mirage, CA. The company will also participate in the groundbreaking, cloud-based, live production of “The Lost Lederhosen” short film, and share details of its pivotal role in the making of this mini-movie during the Retreat’s “HPA Makes A Movie” Supersession on Feb 18th.

mediaClass, a globally active provider of OTT TV everywhere solutions, has announced its own developed AI-based recommendation Engine.

”We have been testing and measuring the success rate of the engine for some time," says mediaClass CTO Stilian Tchlakov. "For this release we have settled on two operator-selectable modes, both of which offer excellent results."

"Without giving too much away technically, mode one is based on AI analysis of personal preferences and searches; mode two is based on studying and machine learning the watching-behaviour of hundreds of thousands of anonymous subscribers” adds mediaClass Head of Research and Development Youri Kalinov. "The mediaClass AI Recommendation Engine uses state of the art technology from Liberate AI to predict and deliver viewer-specific television content recommendations. This is a step change from what has been possible in the past."

“Judging from the measurement results I have seen, the Liberate AI machine learning technology certainly gives us a significant edge," details mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "We will be providing the engine as an integral part all mediaClass deployments. We now have to decide whether to market the recommendation engine as a standalone package to offer its advantages for non-mediaClass deployments.”

Following the appointment of Matthieu Straub as the company’s technical and operational consultant to France and the Benelux countries in the summer of 2019, FilmLight is delighted to announce that it has now established a permanent presence in Paris. By sharing premises with ARRI France, FilmLight is developing a strong hub for creative and technical knowledge and events.

The hub will host the first of FilmLight’s Colour Day workshops in 2020, on 28 January. One of the advantages of sharing the centre with ARRI is that it underlines the seamless workflows from camera to finish, using the BLG format for render-free viewing and creativity. The BLG grading metadata is stored in the ARRIRAW and QuickTime headers, ensuring the content and its look are permanently linked.

The Paris Colour Day on 28 January, aimed at creatives and technicians in production and post production, will see FilmLight’s workflow specialists, Straub and Thomas Eberschveiler unveil new FilmLight tools. Attendees will also hear from guest colourist Stéphane Azouze about his collaboration with directors Anastasia Mikova and Yann Arthus-Bertrand on the recent award-winning documentary ‘Woman’. Finally, colour scientist Florine Bel will share her image expertise and discuss her work developing film aesthetics, colour spaces and conversions.

The shared space has already hosted successful events, including a workshop day for DITs. Led by Straub, with guest speakers from Netflix and from post house Mikros, the group discussed the latest developments in colour space management and workflows. ARRI’s presence allowed the discussion to include ARRI Looks and how they can be incorporated into FilmLight BLG post production. In the demonstration area, they featured an ARRI ALEXA camera feeding Prelight and Daylight software, allowing the delegates to experiment with look development and make comparisons between standard and high dynamic range colour spaces.

Explaining the importance of bringing together creative artists and technicians, FilmLight’s Matthieu Straub said “My background is as a digital image technician, and I know how directors and cinematographers are increasingly relying on DITs to find technical solutions to their demanding creative requirements. “Our intention is to use our demonstration and meeting space here on the Rue René Boulanger to be a place where we can encourage the sharing of knowledge and experiences, to help the French cinema industry achieve ever greater things.”

CVP, one of the UK’s leading production solutions providers, will be providing hands-on experience with some of the latest kit to reach the UK market at this year’s BSC Expo 2020 (Friday 31st January to Saturday 1st February, Battersea Evolution, London).

Featuring a set inspired as a homage to the BSC’s 70th anniversary, the showcase at BSC Expo will allow customers to compare like-for-like options and to get hands-on with the equipment they are interested in — along with all the necessary accessories — to find out how their creative desires can be best fulfilled.

mediaClass reports a sustained acceleration in demand for subscription based services offering video content directly to connected viewers. Bypassing traditional broadcast and satellite platforms, OTT services are typically streamed over the top – meaning over any internet connection rather than a proprietary network.

"Given the rapid changes in product offerings and market trends, the choice of OTT and streaming technology is absolutely key," says mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "The established OTT middleware products on the market are incremental improvements and add-ons to older IPTV-based systems. This leaves them with a heavy footprint requiring massive servers which are inefficient and inflexible."

"Using our detailed knowledge and long experience of TV services to develop a modern, agile architecture and approach, we invested heavily to develop a full product range from scratch. The key parameters for our customer-centric view were to speed up deployment and enable a low-cost legacy IPTV path for service providers and telcos who want to move to a world-class offer which is disruptively affordable. We have developed our own software modules for functions including a content management system, digital rights management and AI recommendation engines as well as CDN and mobile clients."

Promethean, a digital solution to dynamically programme interactive video overlays, has announced its collaboration with True Digital Group, the South East Asian leader in content and digital platforms, to release the new version of the TrueID TV Box application across South East Asia.

TrueID TV Box is the new set top box from one of Southeast Asia’s leading Pay TV platform operators (part of the CP Group) that enables viewers to watch sports and entertainment on live, linear and on-demand basis without the hassle of installation. The latest box release is expected to roll out to thousands of homes across the Christmas period. It is the country's first Android TV Box that meets Google standards, which crucially now includes the certification of Promethean Interactive Overlays. This enables True Digital Group to create a conduit between content and commerce for their TrueID TV Box users.

Promethean is an online platform for dynamically programming interactive video overlays for live and video content on the web, mobile and OTT platforms. It licences a tool that allows broadcasters to place contextual and relevant overlays onto live streams and VOD, delivering engaging customer interactions that drive measurable ROI. Promethean's solution is player agnostic and as such supports a wide range of third party players available today out of the box.

"We've been using the Promethean technology across our websites and mobile apps since the summer, which has led to double-digit click through rates and some very compelling advertising campaigns with great regional brands,” commented Reed Anderson, CTO at True Digital Group. "As we were building our new TrueID TV Box, we wanted to demonstrate the convergence between the viewing experience and the opportunities afforded by connectivity - and that means allowing the audience to interact with the content, whether through man of the match polls or the ability to order food for delivery straight from your TV."

Argentine telecommunications facilities provider Servicios y Telecomunicaciones SA (SYT) has chosen a complete mediaClass OTT TV Everywhere solution as the core of a newly launched Rocstar TV Everywhere platform. The system is designed to allow carriers, cable operators and ISPs to offer own-brand TV Everywhere OTT products based on a strong channel line-up and premium content. All functions are provided through an operator-class version of mediaClass software, customised and integrated into servers at SYT's headquarters in Buenos Aires.

"We signed the agreement with SYT at the April 2019 NAB Show and have been very busy adding specific features for Rocstar TV local markets," says mediaClass EVP Manelli Hosseini. "This new service will allow easy white-labeling for carriers, ISPs and cable operators to offer full TV Everywhere OTT and IPTV with their own brand and their own app. The system includes all the advanced TV Everywhere features – content source processing and storage, digital rights management, subscriber management, viewer analytics and an AI-based recommendation engine. We have also built in true multi-tenancy which is often claimed but not delivered. The resultant service is very easy to use, includes automatic configuration, and is highly cost efficient."

mediaClass announces Broadcast-Pro, a new version of its end-to-end IPTV/OTT multiscreen platform. Broadcast-Pro is designed for broadcasters and content owners who are looking to launch an independent TV-everywhere service for their customers.

When the original two mini-series of Top Boy ended on the UK’s Channel 4 in 2013, few people thought the critically-acclaimed drama about two London street gangs would ever come back.