Life in HD

I love technology. Since a young boy I can remember gazing in awe at my Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2 and smiling loudly at the weird screeching and beeping noises coming out of the tape deck as Bomberman took an agonising five minutes to load up on my blinkered monitor.

Since that fateful day back in the Spring of 1987 technology seems to have changed lanes to the proverbial Autobahn and is currently rocketing past the Baltic coast. The speed of technological advances continues to astound me. Technology, like the Autobahn, constantly has you checking in your rear view mirrors these days. I confess to being completely and utterly engrossed in what I call Life in HD. One could say that sound and vision are my ears and eyes to the outside world and the Internet is my close friend that helps me communicate and reciprocate with the outside world.

Keeping up with technology is a difficult task but as I mentioned, I’ve become very good at checking my mirrors recently. Last week I went on the annual pilgrimage to the IBC conference in Amsterdam, now my fifth year being submitted to all things to do with broadcast delivery and content management.

If what was on display at the broadcasting industry's annual shindig provides a true picture, we'll all eventually be watching in Super Hi-Vision (yes, there's something else after HD), and in 3-D, and we will be getting more and more of our TV via the internet and on our mobile phones.

Albeit the economic downturn, whilst having a slight impact on footfall in Amsterdam this year, is having no impact on the thriving broadcast industry examining the latest kit, pushed at visitors by the likes of Sony, Panasonic and Philips. The industry seems to have decided that in the future there will be two kinds of television - the cheap and democratic stuff, and the ultra high-quality version which only the professionals can afford to make.

Hence Super Hi-Vision. This is a futuristic project, collaboration between Japan's NHK, Italy's RAI and the BBC, which promises 16 times the resolution of HDTV and 80 times what standard definition offers. I sat in an auditorium watching a live feed in Super Hi-Vision from the roof of London's City Hall, with the sound of the city swirling around us. As well as extraordinary pictures, the new standard offers "22.2 channel immersive audio", though as one sceptical journalist pointed out, who's going to install 22 speakers in the front room - and then find room for another .2?

Well. Me quite frankly.

All of this is a long way from reaching our homes. But it’s great news for marketers. It will give us the opportunity to continue to innovate. To develop the kind of digital content we have the know-how to build but not the opportunity to implement as yet. If IBC is the future of things to come, my Life in HD is only just beginning and I can’t wait.