M+E Connections

LAS VEGAS — Top-tier entertainment for vehicles, a crucial partnership with AWS, and an eye on sustainability efforts with AI technologies. Here’s what Xperi, MetaBroadcast and Digital Bedrock brought to NAB 2024.

Xperi

A BMW i7 and a Hyundai Sonata featuring DTS AutoStage powered by TiVo. A BMW R18 motorcycle with HD Radio. And a whole lot of foot traffic demoing absolutely everything Xperi and its subsidiaries had to offer.

Yes, it was a good NAB for the team behind DTS, TiVo, HD Radio, and just about every in-vehicle entertainment advancement that’s popped up the last few years.

“A lot of technologies are coming to forefront, and the battle can be won with DTS AutoStage, by bringing the best features into the car,” said George Cernat, senior director of business development for broadcasting for Xperi, speaking on probably the most eye-catching product the company showcased. It sure turned heads with NAB, with AutoStage leaving Las Vegas with an innovation award.

AutoStage is global connected-car entertainment platform that marries linear broadcast with IP-delivered content with an emphasis on being extremely user-friendly. Audio, video even gaming, DTS AutoStage makes it simple (and safe) for consumers to discover and engage with entertainment while on the go.

Part of what’s making AutoStage attractive to Xperi clients is the mountain of customer consumption insights available via the DTS AutoStage Broadcaster Portal. Both the radio and music industries are gaining actual broadcast listening metrics via Xperi, providing broadcasters insights around where audiences are listening, along with when, and how. And in an age when data is everything to media and entertainment, AutoStage’s insights are proving invaluable, Cernat said.

Another highlight for Xperi: the uptake in its subscription-free HD Radio offering. The digital radio system is approaching availability in nearly 100 million vehicles, and its data-rich features — artist info, bookmarks, real-time updates — are proving even more popular as more people tune in.

“The technology is raising the bar on radio in vehicles, and we’re very excited about the response,” said Donna Detweiler, senior manager of technology outreach and education for Xperi. “Our vision for connected cars is a unified experience for consumers.”

MetaBroadcast

The glass-enclosed production control room at the Amazon Web Services booth at NAB featured live, cloud-based news broadcast productions all week, with graphics overlay, editing, and other elements handled remotely, all a testament to the abilities of AWS live cloud production technologies.

And behind the scenes was MetaBroadcast. The metadata specialists handled schedule and metadata management for the live productions, simplifying the organization and distribution of program schedules and metadata, ensuring accuracy from end-to-end.

“It’s been so heavily trafficked and was really fun to see,” said Peggy Dau, head of marketing for MetaBroadcast, regarding the AWS booth. Using AWS, MetaBroadcast ensures entertainment metadata is accurate and seamlessly provided, thanks to a licensing partnership with IMDb.

It was yet another example of MetaBroadcast’s ability to quickly ingest and organize top-tier metadata from third-party sources using both data science and AI and ML solutions. And it was another notable partnership with AWS, with MetaBroadcast building its flagship metadata solution Atlas using AWS.

“We enable our customers to save money around metadata, and understand the art of what’s possible with metadata,” said Jamie Mackinlay, CEO of MetaBroadcast. “Everyone in the industry is concerned about rights and getting paid the right away. We help accomplish that.”

Digital Bedrock

Digital Bedrock CEO Linda Tadic understands the appeal of artificial intelligence technologies for the media and entertainment industry.

But she’s also cautioning her colleagues: your AI is probably not conducive to sustainability efforts.

“We’ve also stressed sustainability, that’s been our m.o. from the start,” she said, with the MTSS Sustainability Booth Stamp for the 2024 NAB show shown nearby.

The Media Tech Sustainability Series aims to foster sustainability within the media technology arena. “We’re using all these AI tools without much thought on sustainability and there needs to be more awareness on how these tools are just eating power.

“We need to be looking at making tools and data centers less use intensive. Everyone’s aware of it, we need to start doing it.”

Digital Bedrock brought its usual expertise to Las Vegas, showing how it can preserve pretty much anything you’ve got, from documents to digital film masters to NFTs.

For this year’s NAB, the company shared that it is now capable of extracting Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) and other provenance metadata for content created using AI tools. “We can pull that forensic metadata to determine is something was created using GenAI,” Tadic said, pointing to the increasing need for clients to determine if there’s AI-generated content trying to be passed off as legitimate.