From our correspondent BOB AUGER. According to the organisers, almost 53,000 people attended IBC in Amsterdam in September 2013. This year promises to be at least as busy - no wonder it is so hard to get a drink! If people could be compressed in the same way as video data, visitors could party at the The Beach waterside bar in the RAI complex and it would still be possible to get to the bar. Data compression is at the heart of almost all the hardware and delivery systems at IBC 2014 and without it, the higher resolution video and multi-channel sound on show would not be possible.

For the technically-minded, Saturday's conference session "A new era of compression with high efficiency video coding" was an eye-opener on how mathematical algorithms can reduce the amount of data in a video stream. For the rest of us, it is enough to say that HEVC, which is now accepted as the standard for Ultra HD delivery, is going to bring some amazing quality images to domestic screens in the future. Everywhere at IBC, visitors could see the evidence of the revolution that comes with Ultra-HD. Hardware vendors achieve astonishing feats of compression and the dreaded 'artefacts' have all but disappeared. Fine detail is no longer rendered as a murky colour wash and fast motion does not leave a trail of troubled pixels in its wake.

This month, the Blu-ray Disc Association announced that the specs for the 4K disc will be ready later this year and product will come to market by early summer 2015. With data rates of up to 50 Mbps, 4K pictures at 60 fps and possible support for 100GB discs, the product is a dream come true for believers in the long-term future of packaged media. Let's hope it does not turn into a nightmare, as content owners realise just how good images at 4K can be and start demanding even more onerous copy controls. At this resolution and with almost any of the semi-pro video cameras here at the show, there is no need for pirates to risk a visit to the local film theatre.

The Big Screen at IBC has always featured cinema content and delivery, and Saturday night's screening must be the best yet. Ang Lee's Life of Pi, which brought 20th Century Fox four Academy Awards and has taken more than $600 million around the world, was shown for the first time anywhere using the super-bright Christie 6P projector, in 3D and with Dolby Atmos sound. The queues started forming more than an hour before doors opened, but it was worth the wait.

The result was simply astounding - an immersive experience that does justice to the efforts of the entire film production team. It also reminded us of how much good 3D adds to the shared experience of watching a movie in a cinema environment. From Blu-ray, the production looks great when watched in 2D, and indeed 3D, on a large flat panel TV, but some say the thrills of 3D quickly tire. To quote one well-known promotional campaign, the 'Magic of the Cinema' still remains.

And if anyone at the IBC Big Screen event on Saturday night was wearing a head-cam with the intention of posting a copy on-line the following morning, they will have been very disappointed with their results. That's one quantifiable benefit from the operators' point of view.

Story filed 14.09.14