IBC has announced the shortlist for the highly coveted IBC2021 Innovation Awards. This year, the awards will celebrate the spirit of collaboration within the content and technology industry, where organisations identified a market challenge and worked together to create a solution. Winners and their technology partners will be honoured at an awards ceremony at IBC2021 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 3-6 December 2021). 

Dick Hobbs, Chair of the IBC Innovation Awards Jury, commented: “This year’s finalists submitted awe-inspiring projects, many of which had the primary purpose of creating a sense of togetherness despite global circumstances keeping many of us physically apart. The content and technology industry ensured we remained connected by providing coverage of our favourite sports teams with new interactive features and streaming major live events. It also created the world’s first voice-interactive digital portrait and took us to outer space — not for the first time in IBC Awards! What’s even more remarkable is that these ground-breaking projects were delivered in the midst of immensely challenging global circumstances.”

The Content Creation shortlist is:

• Netflix for creating the first-ever hand-drawn anime with experimental 4k and HDR.
• Riedel which produced the first fully decentralised production of a live, global music event.
• Songbird, which was the first American feature film to return to production during the covid lockdown using camera to cloud technology.
• Timeline Television for its remote broadcast app Stream Anywhere which helped major UK broadcasters’ production teams film remotely from a range of locations.

There are five on the shortlist for the Content Distribution category:

• Boeing live-streamed the Starliner’s return from orbit in HD broadcast quality, with sub-one second latency from a remote desert location for NASA TV.
• BT Sport delivered fully remote coverage of the 2021 UEFA Europa League Final from Poland in 4k HDR and Dolby Atmos sound.
• MGM Studios launched a new blockchain-backed platform with Eluvio that provides a more efficient, secure and cost-effective way to deliver ultra-low latency video.
• Migo created an entirely new way to deliver digital content in countries that lack a widespread broadband infrastructure.
• Riot Games was the first organisation in the world to use JPEG XS compression for two major trans-Atlantic esports tournaments.

The shortlist for the Content Everywhere category also sees five projects honoured:

• BT Sport developed new technologies to recreate the match day experience for live sports fans watching their favourite teams at home.
• Deutsche Fußball Liga enhanced the Bundesliga world feed with an interactive service, allowing each user to follow the matches, teams and players that interest them the most, and enabling them to personalise their user experience with detailed graphics and data.
• In The Room used AI and exclusive Ultra HD content for consumers to interact “face-to-face” with personalities like Nile Rodgers.
• Mediapro was shortlisted for the rapid growth of Ubeat, its free esports and entertainment multiplatform.
• Sky Sports and SimplyLive for their remote production partnership, which created and delivered a true cloud-based, multicamera production environment and also has a positive environmental impact.

Hobbs added: “This year’s finalists and their projects embody the meaning of collaboration and innovation, making it the highest standard of entries we’ve had to date. I cannot wait to celebrate the recipients and their technology partners at the awards ceremony when we return to Amsterdam in December.”

There are a number of other presentations alongside the IBC2021 Innovation Awards — the best technical paper in the conference is traditionally honoured with an award, and this year there will be a winner from the IBC Accelerator Project, designed to create collaboration for cutting-edge innovation. IBC’s most prestigious honour is the International Honour for Excellence, which goes to an individual or organisation which has made an outstanding impact. Previous winners of the International Honour for Excellence include Sir David Attenborough, the Science and Technology Labs of Japanese broadcaster NHK, and creator of Sesame Street, Joan Ganz Cooney.