Groovy Gecko at IBC

By Craig Moehl, CEO, Groovy Gecko The video industry continually develops at an extremely fast pace, therefore we are acutely aware of the need to keep up-to-date with all the cutting edge technology and changes. Tradeshows are one of the most effective ways of doing so I have spent the last few days pacing the halls at IBC, one of the biggest broadcast and media tradeshows. It was an extremely valuable trip to find out what is new and provided a great excuse to visit the beautiful city of Amsterdam. Unsurprisingly Virtual Reality was a major buzzword at this year’s show, with demos in practically every hall. There was a real mix of VR and 360 and a number of conference panels discussing the challenges and opportunities these present. At a panel moderated by Sam Rosen of ABI Research, for example, Alex Lindsay of Pixel Corps commented on how VR is a great add on to enrich the user experience across a range of verticals, from education to tourism and events. As well as looking at an exciting mix of new software and tech, IBC was a great opportunity to catch up with collaborators and friends. This year, that included projects with the video experience pioneer, Accedo, and digital platform, Blend Media. Accedo offers a portfolio of experience-centric video solutions that enable its customers to monetise video and transform video services to meet rapidly changing consumer expectations. Accedo customers include over 350 of the world’s leading video service providers, such as Disney, HBO, and Netflix, among many others. At IBC, Accedo demonstrated its latest VR capabilities in the newly launched Accedo One™ platform, which enables Pay TV operators, broadcasters and brands to rapidly create, manage and publish immersive video and VR experiences across devices, while ensuring a consistent brand experience at all times. If you have been following our updates, you will know that we have worked on a number of VR streaming projects with a variety of clients. Therefore, we were approached by Accedo to deliver some extra demo content to help them show off this new innovation. I had a demo myself and was very impressed with just how good it was. I can understand how Accedo won a CSI award for a VR project using this technology. Blend Media is a digital platform representing and showcasing the best in 360 content from around the world. It has an online library of 360 clips from a variety of different companies available for purchase and use. We are providing a demo reel showing some of the projects we have worked on to help people looking for 360 streaming partners see what we can do for them. We are on the cusp of some serious VR innovation and that was extremely obvious from walking the halls at IBC. I, for one, look forward to seeing how that equates to more widespread consumer adoption of VR and am excited for future VR streaming projects in the pipeline here at Groovy Gecko.