Dr Leonardo Chiariglione, the founder of MPEG, was unfortunately upstaged at his own keynote address at IBC in Amsterdam last Friday.

Google and YouTube are parasites. It's all about content; the rest is just railway lines.

This was the message given by ITV boss Michael Grade in his recorded interview included in the session. A few people in the audience started clapping until they realised they were outnumbered by the growing army of raised eyebrows.

Were we in a conference from the late '90s? Or did this have anything to do with the fact that ITV is due to be relegated from the FTSE 100 later this month?

The idea that content can be easily separated from technology and distribution is plain wrong. One has been informing the other since the start of broadcasting, through the production technology available at the time or the way audiences find, share, discuss and consume it.

The biggest mistakes I have seen in the broadcast world are when interactivity is slapped on once the paint is dry in the production process or when a technology application is created without consideration of the audience it is intended for.

DAB slideshow showing some of the output from the olympics twitter feed from 5live

You can't spend much time at IBC without hearing about convergence and the ever-redrawn battle lines between content owners, broadcasters, internet service providers and telcos.

One of the debates at this year's event was around mobile TV [mp3], which on the broadcast side hasn't had the most prestigious start after several years of hype, trials and struggling commercial services.

Mobile operators have struggled with small volumes of low quality video clips in walled gardens that are expensive to consume and unreliable in reception. With mobile services, context is everything - not just the web (or telly) bundled across to a smaller screen, but content which takes account of where and how it is consumed, and by whom.

You could draw the conclusion that video on the move just isn't as important as was thought. I believe it's just a question of when.

We are in a transitionary phase where we are just starting to see the possibilities for mobile video once it's made easy to consume and the pricing structure is relatively understood, as with the iPhone.

Let's just start to think about mobile video and audio, of which TV is a subset rather than a starting point - both broadcast- and internet-delivered video have a part to play in the future of mobile TV.

p2p-next looks like anything else on display at IBC until you understand what it's doing. Live p2p video streaming based on the tribler infrastructure - a potential solution to iPlayer success... Great project involving BBC's George Wright, Pioneer and the EBU among others. Of course, not just video can use this. Nice work.

Walking the halls at IBC proffered the usual mix of landmark moments, promising new technology and the next biggest, brightest display screens, some of which can be seen in this IBC set on Flickr.

It made me proud to see that the BBC were involved in a lot of the best of show - DVB-T2 (next generation digital terrestrial TV delivery), Super High Vision (HD on steroids) and p2p-next (live peer to peer streaming), to name a few.

Let's just hope that next year can see a keynote fit for 2009 not 1999.

DVB-T2 - rotated constellations (256 QAM): BBC has been leading the work of the DVB group in its next generation DVB-T work. DVB-T2 gives about 50% extra capacity than DVB-T and will be essential for Freeview HDTV services - currently planned for the end of 2009. More detail here: dvb-t2

John Ousby is head of distribution technologies, Audio & Music Interactive.

On the subject of Olinda, Radio Today quotes AM&I's R&D man Tristan Ferne from the Radio At The Edge conference:

It shouldn't just be the BBC. This is really for all radio stations. I'd like your help.

If you have any thoughts on social radio, do please leave a comment below.

Blowing The Trumpet For Sharing

Rewind to the early '90s. I was walking to Catford station, radio in my pocket, listening to Chris Evans and company on his astounding GLR breakfast show. He jumped into the "honk your horn" feature. Suddenly, several dozen horns blared out around me. I felt like I was part of something bigger - a solitary experience was transformed into a shared one.

Despite presenters finding new and fun ways of uniting their audiences, shared experiences around radio and television have dwindled ever since radio stopped being a piece of furniture and moved to the pockets of youngsters keen not to share their parents' taste in music.

We are witnessing the growing popularity of content on demand and the increasing range and take-up of audio and video consumption on portable devices is growing. So should we be bothered? I think we should.

Of course it is possible for large numbers of people to share experiences in the on demand world. Look at YouTube, iPlayer and the Radio Player, where increasing numbers of people are asynchronously consuming the same content and commenting, rating, tagging and even talking about it later. There's something about sharing a live experience which adds a layer of depth to the relationship we have with our media.

Real social networking, where people from diverse backgrounds come together around their passions and interests, has great social value in an environment of increasing diversity and ghettoised communities.

There are some interesting early developments that new technology is making possible.

Take the UK Film Council. They have put digital projection into a third of UK cinemas and has been dipping their toes into social networking around film through myfilms.com for nearly a year now. What they are looking at now though is how they can use their infrastructure to allow people to choose what they want in their local cinema, breaking out of the cycle of two weeks of blockbusters followed by obsolescence until DVD. So, apart from opening up the long tail of film to a wide audience, the council could create opportunities for virtual communities transitioning to real world shared media experiences.

The German company Viif has developed an interesting application for the mobile phone where you can invite your friends to watch video clips with you, using video calling. You can see your friends and communicate with them while watching something together. This is a small step away from what is possible on Skype conference calls and MSN already, with kids chatting about what they are watching while attempting to do their homework.

In BBC Audio & Music interactive, we have developed a prototype radio with DAB and WiFi which allows social listening; you are alerted when any of your friends are listening to radio and have the option of tuning in to the same station. The radio knows what you and your friends are listening to, creating the backbone for recommendations and social networking around your radio tastes. The BBC developed the prototype, codenamed Olinda, with Schulze & Webb who are blogging about it here.

It's not all new, of course. Test the Nation on interactive TV, the Jonathan Ross mobile quiz and the innovative things being done on the BBC big screens around the country, to name a few, have all provided great insights into mass participation and connection around live media.

"Honk your horn" was forced off the air when the police branded it a traffic hazard. Hopefully new ways of uniting people around live media won't come to such a premature conclusion.

John Ousby is head of distribution technologies, A&M Interactive