HPA Tech Retreat 2018 is on the Horizon

Sohonet are heading to sunny Palm Springs for the annual HPA Tech Retreat this February, where top industry creative and technical talent will be converging to discuss and debate upon all aspects of film, television, production, post-production, digital cinema, and video. What should we expect from HPA Tech Retreat 2018? Well, Mark Schubin, the Program master (and merciless time keeper) of the HPA Tech Retreat commented back in December that “this year’s program might be the best ever, covering everything from “fake news” to direct-view screens in movie theaters.  And that’s not counting live VR, eSports, Pixar’s approach to worldwide cultural differences — everything from cinematographers to consumer electronics”. Excited? Who wouldn’t be?

What sessions should I attend?

Monday’s TR-X Supersession kicks off the week as a separately-ticketed half-day session focused on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Based on last years’ Tech Retreat session, eXtra, if you’re in town early, you should head along. Leon Silverman, HPA’s past president and Jerry Pierce, member of the HPA Board, will cut the virtual ribbon on the primary Tech Retreat on Tuesday morning. The big Supersession: It’s Still Snowing and We’re Just Making Bigger and Better Snowmen dominates Tuesday’s program, find out what its all about here. Bright and early on Wednesday morning, attendees will meet for Breakfast and Breakfast Roundtables. Topics from IP/PTP in Real-Time Production & Distribution to Hybrid Storage Workflows are in the mix. Our picks for Wednesday include the Broadcasters Panel, moderated by Ericsson’s Senior Vice President of Technology, Matthew Goldman, Sony’s Implementation of IMF and the Advanced Cinema Technology Session at the end of the day. For Thursday the HDR Flavors panel looks pretty hot with Pixelogic’s Seth Hallen moderating and panelists from BBC, Samsung, Dolby Labs and Sony Pictures joining him.  The Remote and Mobile Production Panel will also be on our list. Hopefully, by Friday we’ll still be standing and will hit the Virtual Cinematography and Storytelling Engines session before finishing the show with Belden’s Steve Lampen’s Where Are We Heading presentation. A complete 2018 HPA Tech Retreat program, with schedule and speakers’ bios, is available here

What’s Sohonet showing in the innovation Zone?

Come find us in the Innovation Zone again this year. Sohonet will showcase the newest release of our real-time remote collaboration solution,  ClearView Flex, integrated with the Bluescape visual collaboration environment. Capable of streaming to any device with only 2 frames of delay, this tool is designed for the modern media workflow. We will also demo the many recent enhancements to our accelerated file-transfer tool FileRunner. FileRunner has been architected to allow media files of any size to be transferred without the need for server or client-side software. Look forward to seeing you there!