SpaceTech TV Engineering

17th Annual Meeting of the Arab HDTV and Beyond Group
22nd of May 2024

The 17th annual meeting of the Arab HDTV and Beyond Group took place at the Novotel World Trade Centre, Dubai on May 22nd 2024, under the patronage of Eng. Abdelrahim Suleiman, Director General of the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU).
The meeting was presided by the Chairman Dr Fares Lubbadeh, CEO of SpaceTech TV Engineering , with the group’s Honorary Chairman Dr Riyadh Najm , CEO of Shashah World and Vice-Chair Eng. Samir Asiri , Assistant President SBA , as well as Eng. Bassil Zoubi , Director of ASBU Technology and Development Department . The meeting was attended by professionals representing Arab state and private broadcasters, regional and international manufacturers, service providers & systems integrators.
Abdelrahim Suleiman welcomed the meeting attendees and explained the current activities of ASBU. He advised that ASBU is creating a new group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) , thus the activities of Arab HDTV & Beyond group will be dissolved. Suleiman thanked the group for its impact on introducing & spreading HDTV in the Arab World. He invited the meeting attendees to ASBU’s 24th session of the Arab Radio and Television Festival, which will take place in Tunisia from June 26th to 29th , 2024.

Fares Lubbadeh provided his first presentation on “Global Situation of UHDTV” where he mentioned that 4K resolution is a natural evolution, strongly dependent on equipment replacement cycles. The production equipment is available. In general 8K resolution is not on the radar of broadcasters, it has mostly been used to market/sell new displays. The latest trend in the market is towards TVs with 8K resolution, offering even higher picture quality than 4K UHD TVs. Another trend in the UHD TV market is the rise of smart TVs, which offers access to streaming services and other online content.
In his presentation on “ASBU Technical Activities Update”, Bassil Zoubi, Director of Technology and Development, ASBU, discussed the issues of ASBU Cloud Platform, Requirements , Workflows & Service Challenges. Bassil also analyzed Enhancing Production Workflow , Cybersecurity , WRC Results on UHF Spectrum , Early Warning Systems & the Global Arab Bouquet.
Andreas Hilmer, Chief Marketing Officer of Lawo, presented “Vision of the Future: Unlimited Scalability for Live Production Infrastructure” He stated that the migration of broadcast infrastructure to IP can be seen as a prerequisite for an even bigger step in the evolution of live production technology. He discussed completely new approaches to system design that allow for unlimited flexibility and scalability, and significantly higher levels of utilization of processing capacity and underlying investments. Andreas illustrated the impact of containerized, scalable, dynamic software running on standard server compute, discussed the difference between software-based and platform-based software, and explained the technical and commercial requirements to make these approaches a production reality.
Thomas Gunkel, Market Director Broadcast, Skyline Communications , presented "MediaOps" - Harmonizing ICT and media workflows and operations. Thomas discussed how media companies can optimize operational efficiency in a rapidly evolving landscape. While they need to embrace general IT-concepts, at the same time IT tools often fall short because of their particular needs. The needs of media teams involve real-time and live operations, 24/7-availability, while common ICT-topics are security, data-driven management, and using DevOps principles. To reduce cost, improve efficiency and business models, both worlds need to be harmonized. A MediaOps architecture is the underlying foundation to achieve this.
Luke Williams, Sales Director Middle East & Africa, Mediakind
In his presentation “Bring Your Own AI, Create Value in Broadcast Streaming” , Luke mentioned that AI has the potential to make possible media functions that were previously too difficult or too expensive to execute, and to reduce costs and improve accuracy compared to manual processes. AI itself is such a rapidly changing field, the ability to take advantage of different and new AI workflows will become key to enabling that use. Luke outlined how AI has been adopted into video workflows, and showed examples of where it can be used, including tangible commercial benefits.

Hasan R. Sayed Hasan, Managing Director, Master Media. Hasan introduced in his presentation "Media in the Artificial Intelligence Era: Opportunities and Challenges" the Guidelines and Recommendations of the Arab Media Congress (3): On National and Regional Levels , On Media Organizations Level, Collaboration amongst media organizations and with AI Developers, Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and Newsrooms & About the Challenges of Arabic Content with Generative AI.
In his second presentation “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Next Generation” Fares Lubbadeh stated that the Artificial Intelligence is the future and it is estimated that by 2030 AI will add $15.7 Trillion to the global economy. New AI-driven technologies will transform our society, revolutionizing Medicine, Transportation, Cybersecurity, Video , Media and Entertainment Industry, Automation , Education, Manufacturing, E-Commerce, Government & AI Robots. AI will eventually make many jobs obsolete but, as in the past, new technology will create more jobs than it takes away. AI programming is very clever but AI can never become sentient, like a human. No, AI won’t enslave humanity but it will likely be the best assistant you could imagine.
In his presentation “Artificial Intelligence in TV Production & Broadcasting” Mohit Goyal, Senior Business Development Professional at Evertz, discussed firstly: AI's role in content creation where it facilitates metadata markup on archive content, automated editing/highlights, real-time rendering, and more. Secondly: AI's impact on production and broadcast quality, highlighting its ability to monitor complex systems, maintain signal and program integrity, scheduling, and delivery. Thirdly: AI-driven enhancements in audience engagement, showcasing interactive experiences facilitated by chatbots, sentiment analysis, and recommendation systems. Furthermore: ethical considerations and challenges surrounding AI implementation in live production, including privacy and creativity concerns, algorithmic biases, and the human-AI collaboration paradigm.
Naser Refat, CTO & Investment Officer, Rotana Media Group, provided a presentation on “Introduction to AI Growth” where he defined AI & its Evolution, discussed the Current Applications of AI in Governments and Private Sectors, introduced the AI Driven Technologies in Healthcare and in Finance , explained the Challenges and Opportunities in AI Implementation and discussed the AI Ethical Considerations and Emerging AI Technologies and Innovations.

At the end of the meeting, the Chairman thanked ASBU & the Members of the Group for their support & contribution and wished the new AI Group success in achieving their targets.

Dr. Fares Lubbadeh , CEO of SpaceTech TV Engineering , Chairman of Arab HDTV & Beyond Group, attended the ASBU 23rd Arab Festival of Radio & Television in Tunis from 12th to 15th June 2023, where he chaired the engineering seminar on Artificial Intelligence with the participation of Eng. Mohamed Elbashir , META @ Strategis Governance Tech & Policy Public Global ; Dr. Hasan Mustafa , expert in Digital Information Technology , professor @ UAE universities; Mr. Fred Petitpon , CoFounder & CTO of Newsbridge and Eng. Sameer Al-Jumai, Head of New Information Office at ASBU.
The benefits of artificial intelligence are exciting, to say the very least. Certainly a shift to such a hugely impactful technology has its downsides as well. The increased infringement on our privacy, the complacency that can come with having a computer make many of our decisions for us, and just the general transfer of control to intelligent programs can be a little scary to consider. But all that said, it’s pretty clear that AI will improve just about every single way we produce and consume media entertainment for decades to come. Currently, AI does not have a comprehensive regularity scheme in place. However, regulators around the world are moving towards AI regulation.