First up was hybrid radio. Floris Daelemans, from VRT, showed delegates their recent Marconi Project, which enables fully interactive and personalised radio shows and gives presenters the ability to poll their audience. Alexander Erk, from IRT, showed how the HRadio project had used “DAB over IP” to overlay dynamic content such as “Now Playing and DAB slideshow.
The second platform to be discussed was 5G. Rüdiger Landgraf and Martin Holovlasky, both from KRONEHIT in Austria, described how 5G can be used as a true broadcast (one-to-many) system. Martin said, “It doesn’t even require a sim card” and has comparable coverage to DVB-T2 when broadcast with high power from a high tower.
Benjamin Ricaud then tried to demystify AI for delegates. He explained why computing power and an abundance of data has now made AI a useful technology. However, machine learning is not perfect and improving its accuracy requires so much more computing power. Robert Förster, from Multicast Media, also explained the practical benefits of AI for radio, including how AI can be used to transcribe audio making it more discoverable.
Everyone spoke passionately about their chosen field. But one thing was clear: the broadcast world is becoming more diverse.
