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SHANE ROBISON
Keynote address at NAB2005
National Association of Broadcasters show
Las Vegas
April 18, 2005
© Copyright 2005 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
All rights reserved. Do not use without written permission from HP.
SHANE ROBISON: Thanks Rick. Good afternoon everyone. It's really an honor to be here again.
You know, as in most years, the stage at NAB this week will be filled with some of the most famous names from radio, TV, movies, and the world of sports. But there's something very different this year. Look over the roster of speakers, and you'll quickly realize that this is not your father's NAB. We have representatives from Verizon, from SBC, from Vodafone, from Cox Communications and from leading IT companies like AMD and HP. Now over the years, this media and entertainment show has grown to include people from computing, communications, service providers and from the world of the Internet. So, what's really going on?
The National Association of Broadcasters used to be a tale of one industry. Now it's a tale of two industries. On the one side we have the traditional media and entertainment companies, and on the other side we have the communications and service providers. And bridging the gap between these two worlds is the world of IT and consumer electronics. We're driving the change from an analog world to an all-digital world. Neither industry has had much to do with each other over the last century; both industries developed within sort of closed ecosystems. One held a tight control over the creation, the distribution, and the enjoyment of rich media content. The other held tight control over voice and data services. And that's worked pretty well for them up until now.
But over the last 10 years, both industries have undergone massive change, mostly driven by new technologies. So while regulation and competition forced both to open to the outside world, both industries entered the 21st century searching for new revenue streams and, most importantly, new business models. Both industries have customers demanding new and differentiated experiences. And it's driven by a shift again from an analog world to a digital, mobile, virtual and much more personal world. It's a world where the camera phone is king, where iPods are increasingly the way we experience music and new trends like "podcasting" - if you've heard of that - are changing the way we find and share rich media. The relationships between industries, businesses and their customers are also changing radically. Old competitors are all of the sudden becoming new partners. And new competitors are emerging from completely unexpected places.
Because new players can now use low-cost IP pipes to deliver media and entertainment directly to the consumers, our industries will have to deal with new content aggregators and distributors - companies like Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL and Starbucks, just to name a few. And on that note, these dynamics are radically changing advertising. Personalization, targeting and narrowcasting are all impacted. And it's not just media and entertainment or communications and service providers that are affected. Look at the explosion of broadband content in retail environments.
Convergence, although it's a term that's been overused and over hyped, is real. And it's less about the industries involved than it is about the value chain and how it works for the consumer. It's changing the way content and services are created, distributed and enjoyed across all of our collective industries. But you don't have to hear it from me. Let's show you a quick video that will give you a feel for what I'm talking about.
[Video plays]
So a year ago here at NAB we introduced our strategy for the media and entertainment industry. We announced our intention to build a digital media platform to directly support this industry. We talked about investing in technologies to enable the creation, distribution and enjoyment of new content. And today I want to give you an update on where we are with all of that.
One thing I didn't cover last year was our history with the communications and service provider industry. In telephony, we've been at center of the call path for more than 30 years. Today, HP enables the world's top 200 communications service providers. We deliver voice, data and multimedia services to hundreds of millions of subscribers. Seventy percent of the world's SMS messages are enabled by HP. And we're the leader in interactive voice services, with over 4,000 platforms deployed worldwide.
Content creation
We also have our feet firmly planted in the media and entertainment industry - from workstations for individual artists and composers to some of the largest supercomputer infrastructures in the world. Now I have a quick video to give you a feel for how these partnerships are developing in the content-creation side of the world.
[Video plays]
So a year ago we talked about a partnership between HP and DreamWorks. Shrek 2 was the world's first Hollywood animated feature film to use HP's Utility Rendering Service. This programmable service provides DreamWorks with 50 percent more capacity from a pooled set of computing resources. And we're proud of the fact that Shrek 2 went on to be the largest grossing animated film of all time. HP technology also played a key role in helping DreamWorks release Shark Tale in 2004. It marked the first time a movie studio was able to release two 3-D computer-generated animated films in a single year.
So for an encore, HP and DreamWorks have once again teamed up for Madagascar, which opens this May. You've seen a few clips from it in the video. This is the most technologically advanced animated film ever created. There are 400,000 unique textures and surfaces in the film. In one scene in Central Park Zoo - which you just saw - there are 1,269 people. And in one of the jungle shots there are more than 900 lemurs.
While we help to create new movies, we're also working today to restore some of the classics. A year ago again, we talked with Warner Bros. about how Warner Bros. and HP had reached a unique agreement to pool our collective expertise in image processing, color science and in restoration to digitally restore films from Warner Bros.' television library - one of the largest in the world. Now this year we've made some important advances on the restoration front.
First, we're helping Warner Bros. to restore their Cinerama films. In the 1950s and '60s, Cinerama was kind of the IMAX of its day, and it captivated American audiences with its wide panorama views. The only problem was they were shot with three cameras and then blended together on a curved screen. Now this became a problem. The original elements began to deteriorate. And when you try to stitch them together for DVD release, you could actually see the seams between the cameras. Well, that is until today.
As you saw in the clip from How the West Was Won, HP used its own image-processing technology, which is found today in our digital cameras, to help them remove the seams and restore this classic movie. In addition, we're helping Warner Bros. with their ultra resolution restoration by harnessing the power of parallel processing to manage huge amounts of data.
We announced today that Warner Bros. tapped HP to help restore its 1933 classic motion picture, King Kong. The original negative of this film no longer even exists, and the remaining prints have long since deteriorated. So, using HP's technology, these prints have been scanned at 4K resolution. And again, we're using technology originally invented for our digital still cameras to clean dirt and scratches from the film image. So King Kong will be restored and seen with greater clarity and more detail than ever before - even better, actually, than the original theatrical release in 1933. And this new, restored version will be screened theatrically. It will also be broadcast on television in advance of the new remake of King Kong, which is scheduled for release, I think, in December. So that's a bit about restoration.
Content distribution
Now as I mentioned, HP also announced our intention to build the Digital Media Platform [DMP] for the entertainment industry. We described it as a kind of "digital dashboard" for media and entertainment companies - you know, to do all the things that you do, from managing, creation and storage of digital content all the way through to distribution. Many media and entertainment companies today are still stuck halfway between the analog and digital worlds. Once your content is shot, either on film, tape or digitally, it's still a multi-step process, and you need to make sure it's transformed, logged, tagged, shipped properly and in the right format. It's time-consuming, expensive, and this is the part of the process where a lot of risk is introduced.
So whether it's a movie theater, an airline, a pay-per-view, or a foreign film festival, it's far too slow and far too complicated today. But imagine if you could manage all this process with just a single window - a kind of "digital dashboard", or a kind of mission control for the entertainment industry. This would be a heavy-duty "create once, convert and distribute many" platform. It will enable a secure digital supply chain to help automate the digital workflow. And it will be built on open industry standard architectures so that all the media and entertainment companies can take full advantage of the digital transition.
To give you a better idea of where we are with this, let's take a look at a short video.
[Video plays]
Ascent Media and Sony Pictures Entertainment + HP
We're particularly proud of our announcement today with our partner Ascent Media and their client Sony Pictures Entertainment.
In November of last year, we launched the world's first implementation of the Digital Media Platform. Sony Pictures distributes everything from motion pictures and television content to home video in 67 countries. And they have to transform this content for every conceivable format and market that they distribute to. That's where Ascent comes in. Sony Pictures looked to Ascent to help them transform their current workflow to an all-digital process. Ascent is one of the largest technology media service providers to the broadcast and entertainment industry. And they also post-produce more than a third of the world's advertising content. Sony Pictures had several goals they wanted Ascent to help them achieve. First, to reduce post-production costs. Then, to centralize all of their titles in a single virtual repository, to automate the post-production process, to be able to generate multiple distribution versions from a single digital master, to reduce time to market by automating their entire workflow, and to increase flexibility and provide a highly secure framework across all of these different processes.
In order to meet these aggressive goals, and after a thorough search of the entire IT industry, Ascent Media chose HP and the Digital Media Platform. So just to give you a sense of how well it's been going, Sony wanted to have 100 titles finished by the middle of April - that's now. Using HP's Digital Media Platform, they have over 600 titles up and running. And Sony Pictures is now able to digitally store material for feature films and TV episodes once and then distribute it in multiple formats for multiple markets around the world.
With an all file-based distribution system, this means that Sony Pictures' customers, like Starz-Encore, can immediately air the digital films that they receive. They no longer have to worry about delays in shipping or doing anything with reformatting or conversions themselves. It's all done automatically. It saves them time and money, and the best part is it's totally secure. So to tell us more about why they chose HP, please help me in welcoming the CEO of Ascent Media Group, Ken Williams. Ken, come on up.
KEN WILLIAMS: Thank you, Shane. Ascent is one of the world's largest independent providers of media and entertainment services. The development of a file-based next-generation platform for content management and distribution has really been at the heart of our digital strategy. When we began to engage Sony in this discussion on how to move forward in implementing this file-based future, we discovered that our visions are closely aligned, and we both recognized that a key factor in our success would be to partner with a leading technology-platform provider who shared the same vision.
Ascent did an extensive search for a system that would not only allow Sony to do what they needed to do now and in the future, but would also provide Ascent with a scalable platform that enabled us to deliver these services to other large content owners on a global basis. We selected the HP DMP as our technology platform with its ability to handle heavy-duty metadata tagging, high-resolution imaging and rich media archiving and retrieval. And we saw the potential. We developed Sony's application in a highly collaborative environment, with teams of engineers from around the world of HP working closely with digital media center teams and with the studio. We are delighted to be a partner of HP and delighted to have accomplished this for our client, Sony Pictures Entertainment. Thanks, Shane.
SHANE ROBISON: Thanks. And now let's hear from the end customer, and the pioneer of the world's first DMP deployment, Senior Vice President of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Jeff Hargleroad.
JEFF HARGLEROAD: Thank you, Shane, and thank you, everyone. We at Sony Pictures have always been proud of being an innovator with technology and the use of the HP Digital Media Platform is something that we are very excited about. It's going to give us the opportunity to remain on the leading edge of technology, especially as we dramatically change how we manage the storage, creation and distribution of our tapeless assets. All of these activities are going to be managed in a highly secure environment, which as you can imagine is extremely important given the value of these assets to our organizations. So it's great knowing that we have a secure environment from the ingestion of the assets through to the distribution. And I am greatly looking forward to our work with them and HP and other partners and maximizing this essential platform. Thank you very much.
SHANE ROBISON: Thank you. So we're very proud of the work we've been doing with Ascent and Sony Pictures. And we're really looking forward to building on this great work going forward. But that's not the only place that HP's Digital Media Platform is making inroads.
Warner Bros. + HP
We're announcing today that Warner Bros. and our systems integration partner, Accenture, are designing and implementing an architecture that will enable Warner Brothers to be the first studio to transition its entire film and television production, post-production and distribution process to an all digital, file-based process. At the foundation of this architecture will be the HP DMP. It will be adapted to meet Warner Bros.' specific needs. And in this context, Warner Bros. is completely overhauling two of their most productive technology engines; their Motion Picture Imaging Group and their Global Digital Media Exchange business. So let me give you a rundown of the size and scope of these two operations.
First let's talk about Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging Group. In 2004 they mastered 225 feature films for DVD release. This required over 25,000 hours of color correction and 10,000 hours of dirt-and-scratch cleanup. And they scanned nearly 89 million frames of film in that same period of time.
Warner Bros.' Digital Media Exchange business is also very impressive. Last year they managed about 5000 video-on-demand encodes, and they expect to do about 7000 this year. They deliver around 172 hours of digital video programming every week over broadcast and satellite. This is all directly to their video-on-demand customers. They also manage all the broadcast content for the WB and other clients, much of which is in high-definition format. And finally, last year, they produced upwards of 2500 titles for Warner Home Video on DVD. So connecting these two businesses is a really big deal for them. They'll be managing huge files, up to 4K resolution, all moving back and forth over a common technology architecture. It will be all digital, from the moment it's shot through every step in the post-production process, all the way through the entire digital supply chain - and ultimately out to the consumers in broadcast, Web and DVD formats.
So here to add some more context on all of this is Senior Vice President of production of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Rob Hummel.
ROB HUMMEL: You know, one thing I think I should emphasize is what's been really impressive in the past year working with Hewlett-Packard. But let me talk about what we do first. We restore a lot of feature film titles for Warner Bros. and a lot of award-winning restorations like Gone with the Wind and Singing in the Rain, Robin Hood, and we go to great lengths to make sure we're ensuring the original filmmaker's vision is maintained. Great lengths: like we'll find old Technicolor dye-transfer prints from the 1940s. Those prints never fade, so they're a good guide to make sure when we're color correcting that we're matching that original vision of the filmmaker.
What we found especially interesting was that HP, in developing the tools, were very concerned and constantly asking us things that they wanted to do to make sure: "Will this be OK, because we want to make sure that it doesn't trespass on what the original filmmaker wanted?" So the point, is they've got great technology - but they've got great passion as well. passion for making sure that the technology is applied properly.
And speaking of technology, we've got HP storage now, and as Shane mentioned, we scanned these films and we restore them at 4K resolution. We scanned up six frames per second at 4K - that data comes off the scanner like a fire hose, and yet we've got the HP storage, we've captured it all. Plus we have tripled our storage, and we've got about 350 terabytes in my one facility. It's just been a fantastic help as we've been restoring things.
Now, King Kong, this is hugely exciting as well. Because with this film, not only are we getting print elements, we're getting negative elements. We are combing the world for these elements. One element, one print element, was literally found in a man's attic in England, and we are going to be scanning that to restore that as well. We are literally going to be piecing together the version of King Kong that most people have never seen; because of censor cuts in the 1930s, no one ever saw that version. So it's going to be really exciting to be using this technology and applying it - and working with a great group of people that respect the creative vision that we are working with. Thanks Shane.
SHANE ROBISON: Thanks, Rob. So, that's a lot about what we're doing on the media and entertainment side in our "tale of two industries." So now let's talk about the communications and service provider side. As I said earlier, communications and service providers are eager to capitalize on the explosion of all the rich, high-resolution digital content that's now available. Traditionally, voice and data services were built with specific networks and specific end devices in mind. And they were not transferable across different networks and different devices. What carriers needed was to have their own version of a "create once, convert and distribute many times" model for data services. To get there, they needed an open, industry-standard technology foundation, and that's where HP came in.
HP created two different platforms designed specifically to help network service providers. On the one hand, our Service Delivery Platform helps operators more efficiently create, deploy and integrate new voice and data services. And at the same time, our Integrated Service Management Platform helps provision, manage, track and ensure the QoS [quality of service] and most importantly, the seamless billing of these services. With these two platforms, operators can safely open their networks to a lot of these new, innovative services. And it also helps to protect the integrity and security of the network backbone.
So then to complete the bridge, both platforms can plug into the Digital Media Platform, which thereby completes the digital supply chain across our tale of two industries. If you want to see a demonstration of how this works, go to the HP booth while you're here, because we've got it all up and running there. And with that in mind, I have a video that will add some perspective on this content-distribution side of the world.
[Video plays]
Infinity Broadcasting and Nokia + HP
SHANE ROBISON: So now let's talk about Visual Radio - you just saw a demo of it on the video. As we all know, several new players have entered the radio industry that were not even imagined five years ago. And Nokia's Visual Radio is one. It allows broadcasters to directly interact with their listeners via their cell phones, which is deepening their connection and increasing brand loyalty. For operators, it means increased air time and consumer adoption of new digital services. For the music industry it represents another distribution channel, and most importantly, a more intimate relationship with their listeners. And for consumers, it means more instant access, instant gratification, and a new experience with radio.
One innovation we've added since last year is an e-commerce engine. So when you're listening to a song, you'll see an offer, either for concert tickets or ring tones or other special promotions, and all you have to do is click and it's yours. HP ties the whole transaction directly back to your mobile phone bill. Visual Radio has picked up momentum over the last year. We've completed successful trials in Singapore and the U.K. And recently Visual Radio enjoyed a successful commercial launch in Finland. Nokia predicts that there will be about 100 million Visual Radio-enabled devices by the end of 2006. So that's only next year. And today we're announcing that HP and Nokia are partnering with Infinity Broadcasting to bring Visual Radio to the United States. So I've invited Joel Hollander, the chairman and CEO of Infinity Broadcasting, to join me onstage and share his perspective about this exciting new announcement.
JOEL HOLLANDER: Thanks, Shane. As you know, Infinity is one of the largest major-market radio operators in the United States. Our stations cover every type of broadcast genre, from news, modern rock, FM talk to classic rock and urban format, just to name a few. With a over a hundred radio stations reaching more than 70 million listeners a week, we are always looking for new ways to reach our listeners and expand the distribution of our on-air content. Visual Radio does that, and really gives terrestrial radio a boost.
With Visual Radio, HP and Nokia are helping us fuse together different forms of media to create interactive entertainment for our mobile listeners, which enables us to keep them listening longer. Extending that listener's loyalty is crucial in this day and age, where we are competing for their attention against video games, instant messaging, alternative radio formats and the like. And when you have engaged listeners who are listening longer, you have the opportunity to capitalize on that with new commerce offerings and advertising models - from the sale of ring tones and concert tickets to being able to offer our advertisers new sponsorship and direct response models. Finally, you can see what you can hear and buy what you see.
Infinity has always been a company to offer fresh, first programming, and we are thrilled to extend that philosophy to be the first radio operator to bring Visual Radio to the U.S. market - which I expect to be less controversial but equally as successful as some of our on-air talent. Thanks for having us here today, and thank you, Shane.
HP IPTV
SHANE ROBISON: Thanks, Joel. I really think Infinity's adoption of Visual Radio is a clear sign of exciting things to come in broadcasting. Another new emerging service for consumers is IPTV. So, working closely with our partners, we're leading the industry in developing new business models that will be required for IPTV to be successful. Importantly, to help the media and entertainment companies, we're working to build this in the right way - in a way that preserves the value of programming and ensures that digital-rights management will be enforced. To help communications and service providers tap into the IPTV market,
HP and our market-leading partners are providing an end-to-end solution called "HP IPTV." Some of the key issues HP is helping to solve are scalability, management and the integration of IPTV services. HP technology allows network and service providers to benchmark performance and to ensure that scalable and affordable solutions are delivered to all of their end customers.
In Italy, FastWeb and Telecom Italia are both using HP IPTV to integrate video, voice and data. And they're offering all these services in a single digital package, including personal video-recording technology through the network - which means no TiVo or PVR or similar device, is required. Now, let's move from content creation and distribution to enjoyment and consumption. Here's a video to give you a feel for these new consumer experiences that we're all looking forward to.
[Video plays]
Content enjoyment
SHANE ROBISON: So this is where the fun comes in, and this is where it all comes together, in the hands of consumers. So let me talk a little about TVs and projectors for a second. Last year we entered the television market for the first time. We introduced three new plasma and LCD products. And this year, we're introducing a full line of 17 new high-definition TVs and home-theater projectors. These TVs are going to include a flagship rear-projection TV, as well as a new front projector, both of which are going to be ready for the fall selling season. In addition to HP innovations and new experiences you saw in the video, things like "wobulation," we're also inventing some new ones for consumer entertainment in our HP Labs. So let me just highlight a few of the things that you can look forward to coming out of the labs.
The first one is something called Story Mail. It's a software technology that expands the capabilities of your camera phone. Using a really simple interface, it enables the camera phone user to record, send, receive and play back a set of digital pictures and video clips with personalized commentary attached.
The second interesting innovation is something called Custom TV. Now this is software that allows you to create a totally personalized TV experience based entirely on what you want to watch. Think of it as kind of an automated TV Google. You can also create a personalized family-and-friends network based on your own home videos and digital pictures and other rich digital media you generate yourself.
The third is something called Smart Streaming Technology. This is mobile streaming media - an intelligent mobile streaming media - that optimizes itself for the end device that it plays on. So whether you're using a television or a handheld device or a cell phone, the content will automatically be reformatted for your personal device.
The big trend is that consumers are increasingly wanting to define and control their own experience: when, how, where, and on what device they enjoy their rich media content. One of the keys to enabling these user experiences is digital-content standards. Let me highlight a few of the standards that we feel are critically important. The first is next-generation optical discs, that's the successor to today's DVD standard. HP is part of a broad-based industry-standards group that is advocating the Blu-ray standard. This will provide a common, high-capacity format across PC products, consumer electronics and gaming consoles. Blu-ray has a capacity of up to 50 gigabytes. It enables up to nine hours of high-quality, high-definition, interactive content. And minidiscs will be available for portable applications and devices like high-definition camcorders. The format will foster a new digital experience that has simply not been possible using today's standards.
Another interesting standard that HP and many other companies are also working on is a new wireless radio technology called ultra-wideband. UWB is a technology that not only enables communications between computing devices - all within sort of a 30-foot range - but it also enables communications across computing, consumer electronics and wireless communications in a common language. It's low-powered, so it doesn't drain the battery power of battery-powered devices. It's low-cost, so it can be integrated into a wide range of consumer products. And it transfers data at speeds exceeding 100 megabits per second. So it's great for high-definition multimedia.
Imagine the ability to take video streamed to your cell phone and play it on your big-screen TV, or to have all the photos in your camera automatically downloaded to your computer whenever you're within range. Or imagine having all the components of your home entertainment system connected without any cables - now we could all like that. So that's the promise of ultra-wideband technology.
Now last, but most important, the standards that I want to touch on are in the digital-rights management area, because this is so vital to convergence and the realization of an all digital world. Last year, HP took a strong stand on the importance of digital-rights management and copyright-protected material. And we continue to build on that. We're committed to three primary principles in support of digital-rights management: First, to emphasize digital-rights management in the context of the consumer experience. Second, to build, acquire or license reasonable content-protection technology and solutions. And third, to respect and support the protection of intellectual property and copyright in all of our products and services.
HP's whole point of view here is focused on championing open standards. We believe one company should not control digital-rights management standards. Open standards help the whole ecosystem become more robust, and most importantly, they will enable content creators to have control over their content without becoming beholden to any single technology or technology company. The reason we continue to apply our innovation to open standards in bridging this tale of two industries is because the ultimate promise of convergence is so much greater than the sum of the parts. Together, we have the potential to create an incredible set of rich media experiences for consumers.
But you really need an IT bridge to pull it all together. It's not enough to just have a vision of where these industries can go - you have to bridge. You have to bring real partnerships, you have to bring real technologies, and you have to bring real business propositions to the table. This becomes the foundation for building trusted systems, building common languages, and most importantly, enabling the new business models that all of our industries need.
What I've laid out today is how HP is actively enabling content creation, content distribution, and content enjoyment. All this is focused on helping you save money, make money and create new revenue streams and experiences for your customers - things that never existed before. And in the months and years ahead, while I really can't tell you who the winners will be in this all-digital world, what I can tell you is the ones who aggressively adapt their businesses and technology models are the ones that will win.
One thought I'd like to leave you with is that HP is the IT industry leader working with all of you from the media and entertainment, communications and service providers industries to write the next chapter of this story. A tale of the convergence of three industries. So with that, thank you very much.
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