IBC2018 review: SDI is dead, long live SDI!

The casual observer walking through Halls 10 and 11 at this year’s IBC could have been forgiven for thinking that SDI is dying. Why would anyone want this old style technology with its miles of cables when you can have IP technology? Just get a bunch of gateways and make your life easier!

But as exhibitors at IBC2018 revealed, it’s not that simple. IP is a big commitment, and potentially expensive. Everything has to be compatible, and staff need to be trained. There are cybersecurity implications – and rather than reducing points of failure, IP just moves them to somewhere else.

UHD, in all its flavours, also came high on people’s list of priorities, but again, which flavour they liked, and how they intended to achieve it, was a bone of contention. Where does the money come from, and does it even make sense to go for ever higher definition – instead of, for example, spending money on programme making? And, of course, there’s still the problem with how to make sense of and control all the incoming data.

Axon Digital, for example, was showing the latest enhancements to its…