Harris Morris, president of Harris Corporation's Broadcast Communications Division, sees signs of recovery since 2009.
“The indicators we watch show global advertising revenues are rising, six percent in 2010, and set for six percent in 2011, with revenues set to top half a trillion dollars in 2011, and the TV sector is getting its share.”
How does Morris see the primary technology trends?
“There is a real blend of broadcast and IP-based technologies,” he said.
Baseband video must coexist with file-based systems for some time to come.
“The challenge is that so much is happening, and broadcasters want to try to experiment and evolve the infrastructure without the risk of stranded technology or stranded costs, and to maximize the ROI,” he said. “We have brought to a number of our products the ability to handle broadcast and IP signals and technologies — files and streams. It's evolving as a hybrid infrastructure, and it's going to be the reality for quite a time.”
Another technology trend is “enhancing and simplifying the user experience (for operators) in managing the technology,” Morris said. “The complexity of the task has increased; managing that technology has got to get easier.”
Morris believes that you should “allow troubleshooting and configuration to be done visually and more simply. We see those two cutting across everything from transmitters, to video networking and to DAM, and editing.”
He sees the technology trends are response to the business issues — the proliferation of content , formats and delivery channels. “One thing we believe is you cannot do technology for technology's sake,” he said. “Now you have to deliver a concrete business purpose. We think the money is coming back to the business, but procurement cycles are longer. Buying decisions are more business- and ROI-driven. There is more involvement of financial people in the purchases.”
