Media Trends from CES 2020 and What’s Next for the Video Industry

Just like every year, CES 2020 was full of interesting tech ideas and concepts. While not every presented product is intended to enter the market immediately, still they are an indicator of what’s next in the world of tech. This especially applies to the media-related announcements. Below we break down the essential media announcements from Vegas and contemplate how they will affect the media industry’s near future.

Vertical Video: New Standard?

The vertical video format seemed to be a somewhat recurring theme at this year’s CES. During Intel’s presentation, Adobe presented an impressive vertical video editing tool that will allow its users to crop their footage into a vertical video format for social media. The most impressive part is that Adobe’s Sensei AI engine will automatically determine the main subject of the video and focus on it automatically. This feature will certainly help push vertical video content further into the mainstream.

With Adobe helping editors create fun vertical videos, Samsung showed off how they are planning to help viewers consume vertical content. Their latest TV can rotate to a vertical position, making it perfect for enjoying social media content and home videos.

A couple of years ago the vertical video format was frowned upon by many, but this year’s CES embracing it so actively might mean that vertical format isn’t going anywhere. In fact, the vertical video era might be just in the beginning.

Binging Shows in Cars?

To everyone’s surprise, Sony unveiled a new electric concept car Vision-S. One of the striking features of the car was the number of displays inside the car. The dashboard consists of three widescreen touch boards. CES participants and reporters were able to stream content owned by Sony inside the car. This includes Sony’s movies and music.

Another electric car debut was from Chinese EV company Byton. They showcased their new electric SUV model, the M-Byte. This model also had a huge screen in the dashboard and while Byton didn’t feel it with entertainment content like Sony did, this raises a question about the new era of cars: Will people start consuming more video content right from the dashboard of their cars?

Last year, we’ve seen Tesla rolled out its Software Version 10.0 that made it possible for Tesla owners to stream Netflix right from the dashboard screen. Of course, they can do this only when the car is parked.

These recent announcements give a clear sign of a new emerging medium for video consumption that media companies should take into consideration. With electric cars revolutionizing the car market and especially with self-driving features not too far in the landscape, car rides might be where people catch up with their favorite shows and stream the latest movies.

Sony’s Sports Broadcasting 5G Overhaul

During their CES event, Sony also unveiled its plans for using 5G’s capabilities to take sports broadcasting to the next level. Their new Xperia 5G Millimeter Wave device is essentially a wireless pack that can be attached to existing cameras and enables high-speed data uplink.

In December 2019, Sony partnered with Verizon and NBC to use 5G for capturing the Houston Texans vs. New England Patriots football game. During the game, NBC’s cameraman used Sony’s 5G-enabled PXW-Z450 shoulder camera, a prototype Sony transmitter, and the above-mentioned Xperia 5G device which provided access to Verizon’s 5G network.

5G enabled low-latency, high-quality video to be transmitted almost in real-time to producers. Thanks to this technology there’s a potential for production teams to work remotely regardless of where the game takes place.

Thanks to 5G not only the quality of sports entertainment will improve, but broadcast companies can save a significant amount of money on production team travel costs.

TV Joins the Internet

LG briefly announced the US launch of its internet-based NextGenTV broadcasting standard. According to LG, this is the world’s first internet-protocol-based television standard. This will allow local stations to deliver enhanced image quality like 4K UHD, multidimensional sound and even interactive content.

With TVs providing much more sophisticated displays the demand for higher-quality content keeps rising. At CES we’ve seen TVs with 8K displays, like Samsung’s QLED 8K TV model. While these are too expensive for most people right now, but so was 4K a couple of years ago, now it’s the standard. Most broadcasters have had a hard time keeping up with the fast-developing display standards and internet-protocol standards might be the solution to this problem.

With 5G on the verge and with AI being so widely popular now, the new era of tech is already here. CES 2020 didn’t fail to show what’s next for tech and especially what’s to come for media and entertainment.

By Max Kalmykov
VP, Media & Entertainment at DataArt