The 4K HDR Summit consolidates itself as a reference event for UHD

More than 400 executives and 2,000 visitors from 48 countries have participated in person and virtually in the 4K-HDR Summit 2021 held in Malaga from November 15 to 19.

The organizer Medina Media Events, which has Panorama Audiovisual as a media partner, has already announced that next year it will celebrate the eighth edition, also in hybrid format, for five days and with a reunion with the international experts of the November 14 to 18, 2022.

Ricardo Medina, CEO of Medina Media Events, comments that "in the eighth edition we will reinforce the in-person agenda, with at least two of the five days, and we will maintain numerous virtual presentations on our platform, which allow us the participation of the best Ultra High Definition (UHD) specialists from around the world, to share their progress and projects with all attendees, national and international, without having to travel."

"It is very difficult to match their agendas to travel all of them and on the same dates to the same place. That is why the virtual part of the event extraordinarily complements the in-person part of the 4K-HDR Summit and keeps the event alive for the international community 365 days a year on our Video On Demand (VOD) platform under registration, because otherwise all that knowledge would be lost," explains Medina.

Among the milestones of the 7th edition of the 4K HDR Summit, the celebration of the Presidents’ Day, which is only held annually at this event: the meeting and debate of the three highest representatives of the Ultra High Definition (UHD) associations worldwide: the UHD Alliance (Michael Zink), the UltraHD Forum (Nandhu Nandhukamar) and the 8K Association (Chris Chinnock). And they have already committed to repeating it next year.

The hybrid format has allowed the 4K HDR Summit 2021 to bring together the best speakers worldwide from fields such as content, production, manufacturing or research.

In relation to 4K, HDR (High Dynamic Range) and 8K content, among more than 40 speakers Making up this year's agenda were representatives from the BBC (Great Britain), NHK (Japan), OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services), NASA (USA), OMDIA (Great Britain), and the presidents and founders of pioneering production companies such as Travel XP 4K HDR (India) and the French companies The Explorers, Saint Thomas Productions and Paramax Films.

“No other event worldwide manages to bring them all together,” says Medina, who organized the first edition of the 4K Summit in 2015.

UHD Spain

After the 2020 event, which was totally virtual due to the pandemic, the 2021 edition has expanded its agenda from three to five days and has had a marked Spanish accent, especially for hosting the first assembly of the UHD Spain association, which was born in January and already has 36 member and collaborating companies, among which are 20 Spanish audiovisual groups, private and public, national and regional.

"The physical reunion at the National Digital Content Pole in Malaga of 100 professionals committed to Ultra High Definition in Spain has exceeded expectations. And everyone is already thinking about next year's edition, in which the reunion with international experts will also take place," Medina anticipates.

The 100 attendees at this year's opening day were able to enjoy the presentation of the UHD Spain White Paper, take the first printed copies, and enjoy more than six hours of networking in a very intense day. In addition, they were able to compare and comment on the broadcasts that are being carried out in UHD in more than 40 cities throughout Spain of two 4K demo channels (SDR and HDR), the satellite receptions and the "streaming" of the channel in tests that potentially more than 50% could already see on DTT and on the Internet and satellite 100% of the Spanish population.

Además, una veintena de empresas y multinacionales de primer nivel se han sumado como patrocinadores a la séptima edición de la 4K HDR Summit, como Dolby (USA), Synamedia (USA), Ateme (Francia), Fraunhofer (Alemania), Eutelsat (Francia), Canon (Japón), Nokia (Finlandia), Rohde & Schwarz (Alemania) y Vestel (Turquía).

On the Spanish side, Tedial, Cellnex, Axión, RTVA, Hispasat and institutions such as UHD Spain, Europa Creativa Media Desk Andalucía and the Malaga City Council also participated, in addition to the National Digital Content Pole.

Plataforma virtual

But beyond the prestige achieved by the 4K-HDR Summit as the meeting point in the technological field and high-quality content, there is the dimension that its virtual platform is taking.

Although the main virtue of the 4K-HDR Virtual platform is that it keeps all conferences accessible in Video On Demand (VOD), according to the first data a total of 2,272 users have already visited it in this edition since 48 countries: Australia, Austria, Andorra, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Spain, United States, Finland, France, Greece, Netherlands, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Norway, New Zealand, Portugal, Poland, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom United and Vietnam.

Approximately more than a third of the visitors have been Spanish (778), and these came from 15 different communities: Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Basque Country, Castilla y León, Castilla La Mancha, Navarra, Canary Islands, Murcia, Balearic Islands, Valencian Community, Aragon, in addition to Catalonia, Andalusia and Madrid, for the most part.

The majority profiles have been CEOs, CIOs, CTOs, and directors of Innovation, Business, Product, Strategy, Marketing, as well as producers, filmmakers, engineers, consultants and researchers.

The 7th edition of the 4K-HDR Summit offered a final section dedicated to the partnership UHD Spain, in which the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, RTVE, Cellnex, Hispasat, Ametic, Mediapro, Medina Media 4K and the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) took part, within the group of promoters of Ultra High Definition in Spain, which they invited all those companies and professionals based in Spain interested in 4K, HDR and 8K to join.

In addition, the coordinators of the UHD Spain work groups presented in the face-to-face session the activities carried out this year and those planned for 2022 in Capture (Yeray Alfageme), Post-Production (Xavi Bonet), Coding (Elena Burdiel), Emission (Xavi Redón), Reception (Sonia Valladares) and Technical Tests (Miguel A. Cristóbal).

Another option that sponsors will take up in the 8th edition of the 4K-HDR Summit will be the Demo Area, where they traditionally exhibit their products. This year, although the space was much smaller, in addition to the broadcasts of the UHD Spain channel, the Finnish Nokia did carry unpublished demonstrations.

Nokia presented several of the latest projects from its Bell Labs Spain: Amatista: music therapy with immersive video for seniors about 5G; DISADIS: public security with image analysis by artificial intelligence over 5G; 5GRecords: volumetric video on 5G networks for events and the Ingenious project: remote driving of an automatic guided vehicle with an immersive cockpit and real-time video on 5G, with which they gave an exclusive live demonstration at the National Digital Content Pole.