Euromedia May | Page 34

bcast asia_bcast asia 09/05/2014 18:47 Page 1 Asia’s digital and multimedia trade show returns for its 19th edition. Here’s the Euromedia guide to what delegates can expect in the conference rooms and show floor. roadcastAsia2014 (June 17 -20, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore) continues to serve as the region’s leading platform where professionals gather to network, exchange business ideas, gather market information and source the latest products and solutions. The BroadcastAsia2014 International Conference is Asia’s leading event for the broadcast and entertainment industry. Designed to address the key challenges and trends in the broadcast and media industries, this year’s conference theme is ‘Discover the Right Business Model to Harness Technology and Monetise Content’. Industry experts share their experiences and case studies on OTT, Second Screen, Broadband TV, Multiscreen, Content Distribution, Next wave of technologies for TV, Social media / TV, DVB, Content Delivery Network (CDN), Broadcast Engineering, Cloud Broadcasting, File-based workflow, and Radio Broadcasting. Back for its 5th year, the Creative Content Production Conference will bring the latest case studies on film and TV production, and distribution. Delegates can expect an allround experience specially designed for production professionals. OTT. With the ever increasing demand for mobile broadband anytime, anywhere, the explosive growth of Over-the-Top (OTT) content has accelerated rapidly with some 352.4m people expected to pay for access to OTT programming by 2016. As Asian consumers continue to demand easilyaccessible entertainment, OTT services such as pay-TV are increasingly becoming a necessity in the region with revenues expected to grow to $43.9 billion by 2018, according to a research report. This trend, familiarly coined as the ‘pay TV boom’, will be showcased at the event and will inspire broadcasters to pursue the right business models, whilst harnessing the best technologies in order to monetise content. B 34 EUROMEDIA The BroadcastAsia2014 International Conference will kick off on 17 June with a welcome address by StarHub’s chief technology officer Mock Pak Lam, followed by a keynote address, ‘A Global Perspective on How OTT is Changing the Competitive Landscape of the Broadcasting Space’, which will delve into the opportunities for growth and challenges faced by broadcasters in Asia. DIALOGUE. Following the opening keynote address comes the ‘Captains of the Industry Dialogue 1’, where the OTT conversation continues to flow among a panel of distinguished speakers from Amazon Web Services, Ericsson, HBO Asia, Irdeto, Samsung, StarHub and Telekom Malaysia. Delegates will hear these experts probe the feasibility of OTT becoming the future of TV – how this evolution would impact operators and broadcasters in Asia. They will also discover the newest technologies and discover innovative methods that can help companies effectively face key challenges and capitalise on growth opportunities. Noting that OTT services are gaining greater traction in the US and Europe, Lam Swee Kim, group general manager of Media Prima Digital thinks that Asian operators and broadcasters need to provide OTT services to reach not only a wider target audience, but also for sustainability because content consumption is now expected to be multiscreen. Recognising that there are challenges such as getting the ‘buy-in’ of management to adopt an OTT strategy and setting up a robust OTT platform that is able to cater to the broadcaster’s needs, Kim believes that having good content will work anywhere – be it the traditional broadcast or OTT platforms. “OTT is driving business growth in the Asian broadcasting industry and with new players emerging from different areas across the region, it is an extremely crucial time for us to learn from one another and unanimously develop OTT video services. BroadcastAsia will educate visitors and participating businesses alike, while providing the ideal opportunity for us to draw focus to our target audience, plan our i