The Clock Is Ticking On HD Commercials

According to a recent Which? Survey over a quarter of Britain's households now receives HDTV programming, and the number is growing almost daily.
As a result, the spotlight has fallen on the broadcast sector to deliver answers on a wide range of subjects; from how the management and delivery of HD commercial content will be dealt with in the future to how the industry must set global HD standards.
To start the conversation, an open house HD forum for broadcasters and post houses was held at the London offices of international media technology group Adstream on 25th May.
Attendees included BSkyB, ITV, Channel 4, Turner Broadcast, Viacom, The Mill, Redbee Media and Clearcast among many others. An open and frank debate saw those present tackling a number of key issues for the broadcast and creative industries, from the need for more HD content to how post houses will deal with the various file formats at the creative stage, and the additional versions of commercials which will be required to cover all bases. Also under the microscope was the probable impact on TVC budgets.
Technical considerations were high on the agenda with companies concerned about the need for changes to workflow management systems when dealing with multiple standards on individual commercials and the need for shared standards, as well as the impact on sound quality and audio standards, and subtitling in HD and SD.
In terms of the actual delivery of commercials the group looked at clearance issues related to various versions of the same ad, how the existing ad clock numbering system will deal with the multiple types of definition of the same commercial which will move from Standard Definition to High Definition and in due course 3D.
Commenting on the evening, James Carpenter, Chief Operating Officer of Adstream, said: "The evening was a huge success, and common ground was reached on the need for the whole industry to be involved in what may at first seem a technology issue but will have huge bearing on future creative output, budgets and process management."
(BMcN)