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Articles by Dick Hobbs.

Dick Hobbs is counting heads


Now I am absolutely not going to get into politics in this column. But as I wrote last month, I am a bit concerned about truth and honesty. As I am sure we all are. The White House press secretary has an important and powerful role, and we all loved CJ Cregg for doing it (leading to my lifelong passion for Alison Janney). So when the incoming spoke...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 15 March 2017

Dick finds the truth out there


The Oxford English Dictionary has determined that its word of the year for 2016 was "post-truth". We\'ll skip over the fact that it is, clearly, two words. Post-truth is, according to the world\'s best lexicographers, "an adjective defined as \'relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opi...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 15 February 2017

Health and Safety gone mad


The first true broadcast television service started 80 years ago, on 2 November, 1936. Its home, famously, was Alexandra Palace, a vast and really rather run-down building on top of Muswell Hill in north London. Originally opened in 1873, and re-opened in 1875 after a catastrophic fire, it was built primarily as an entertainment venue. Indeed, it w...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 13 January 2017

Hacking Hell


There was a really scary story in the news a week or two ago. In the words of Yves Bigot, director-general of TV5 Monde, "we were a couple of hours from having the whole station gone for good". What happened to this highly respected broadcaster was that malicious hackers set out to destroy the network\'s systems. That has to be an alarm call for al...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 07 December 2016

Dick looks at the faster future


I really enjoyed IBC this year. The fact that I barely set foot on the show floor is, of course, entirely coincidental, and I should take this opportunity to apologise to all those people I did not see in Amsterdam. One of the jobs I do at IBC is produce the awards ceremony, and this year that meant I got to meet some really nice people. We gave on...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 10 November 2016

Dick puts it all together


Many of you will be reading this as you prepare for IBC. Some may even be reading it on the train/plane/ship to Amsterdam. I want to take a couple of minutes of your time to look at a last minute addition to IBC. It concerns IP, but trust me: this is good news so please do not stop reading just yet. For very, very many years we have connected video...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 26 September 2016

Realising the ideal


On 26 July 1916 there was a public meeting in New York. It was called by a group led by Charles Francis Jenkins (and more on him in a moment). But the guest speaker was Henry D Hubbard, at the time the secretary of the US National Bureau of Standards. This is some of what he said: "Interchangeability of parts is an important principle of standardis...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 24 August 2016

Up in the air with Dick


In the last issue of this magazine was a very interesting article by Lee Sheppard of SGL, talking about the pros and cons of archiving in the cloud. While there is a lot of conversation about cloud storage, its pluses and minuses, I have to confess to still being slightly confused about the practicalities and economics of it. So armed only with Goo...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 22 July 2016

Girl Power


This month I was going to write about something important about the future technological platforms of our industry. It would have been incisive, enlightening and enriching. It really would have been. But I have just got completely derailed by the discovery of what I hesitate to call a cultural phenomenon. And while it is almost certain that you all...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 14 June 2016

Sin City


by Dick Hobbs Issue 113 - May 2016 I am writing this is the immediate aftermath of yet another NAB. For me that means a week of walking around,talking to a wide variety of people and taking the temperature of the industry. This year I developed a theory that there were three sorts of companies exhibiting at NAB,or at least three sorts of spokesmen...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 13 May 2016

Building Blocks


by Dick Hobbs Issue 112 - April 2016 That is the MIT Media Lab saying, in a typically American academic way, that they want to help producers make better content. That is what you find if you Google "object-based broadcasting". Which is what I did on your behalf this month, because BT Sport - which seems to have taken up the idea of innovation in b...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 25 April 2016

Getting real with virtual


It's only February (or it is when I am typing this) but already we are suffering from exhibition overload. I did not go to Mobile World Congress, having no real desire to be mugged in Barcelona. But I did look in at BVE somewhere near London where a conversation with an exhibitor and old friend set me thinking. And perhaps wishing I was at Mobile W...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 01 April 2016

Highly Experienced


by Dick Hobbs Issue 110 - February 2016 I was recently asked to write an article on quality of experience in video streaming. Obviously the first thing I did was ask Saint Google to find me recent research on the subject. It pulled up an absolute gem, a report published by Ofcom, the UK government's communications supremos. It was written by an out...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 16 March 2016

Taking aim


by Dick Hobbs Issue 109 - January 2016 Happy 2016! We have a lot to look forward to this year. In Europe we are likely to find huge amusement in the American presidential election which this year seems to be throwing up an unprecedented set of clowns. In midsummer we have the Olympics in Rio, which should be quite a carnival. In our industry we hav...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 21 January 2016

Dear Santa


with Dick Hobbs Issue 108 - December 2015 My Christmas list this year is very modest. I really do hope that my naughty:nice ratio has been appropriate and you will be able to get at least some of these down my chimney. 1 less bad language. I dont mean swearing: that is all right in appropriate situations. Indeed its absence can be silly: there is...

Submitted by Dick Hobbs.
Published 15 December 2015