John Maxwell Hobbs

Catena is a word that means, ‘connected series or chain,’ and is also the appropriate name for the broadcast industry’s answer to a problem that has only grown more acute with the rise of IP, cloud, and hybrid workflows: fragmented, insecure, and proprietary device control. Developed under SMPTE’s Rapid Industry Solutions Open Services Alliance (RIS-OSA) and recently introduced into SMPTE’s formal standards process, Catena aims to deliver ‘a single secure protocol for control of media devices and services,’ providing a unified, vendor and platform agnostic control plane.

Red Bee’s Richard Kydd discusses the future of television playout, finding the right tech stack, and the fundamental importance of reliability, cost and delivery.

The IBC Accelerator project envisions AI-driven production assistants that seamlessly integrate into control room workflows, enhancing live production with intelligent automation.

While questions remain over genAI’s impact on the creative sector, few can argue against the automation of mundane tasks bringing order to unprecedented volumes of footage.

The project aims to develop and explore a framework for leveraging generative AI to create media content such as scripts, animations, and adverts, streamlining workflows and enhancing audience engagement.

Vizrt’s Jeremy Morris takes a stroll down memory lane to discuss some of the crucial events that helped accelerate the convergence of broadcast and proAV. John Maxwell Hobbs reports.

What was once a process of physically storing film reels and manually logging footage has become an intricate dance of digital ingestion, advanced metadata tagging, and cloud-based workflows. With productions now generating thousands of hours of video per show, managing media efficiently is no longer optional; it’s a necessity.

Once dominated by GEO satellites, live content distribution has entered a new era as broadcasters look to blend connective technologies, bringing both flexibility and resilience. John Maxwell Hobbs reports.

Over the past two decades, the over‐the‐top (OTT) industry has undergone a remarkable transformation from a niche experiment to a multi‐billion‐dollar ecosystem, writes John Maxwell-Hobbs.

As virtual production technology becomes more ubiquitous, the need for real-world training and development for professionals of all levels becomes paramount. John Maxwell Hobbs explores the education and training programmes on offer from academic institutions and industry organisations.