DEFINITION May 2018

09

INTERVIEW NEWS

NOT JUST OLYMPICS For those who might have thought that the new Sharp camera and monitor were just bound for the Tokyo Olympics, Sid explains that this is a long-term initiative. “When you’re a vendor that has the capacity to lead and to make markets, that’s where innovation comes from. Sharp’s heritage is around LCD and clearly NHK’s plan to show the 2020 Olympic games in 8K is a stimulus in our domestic market, if you like. We see both in the consumer space mid- to long-term globally, but in the business marketplace today an emerging requirement for higher resolutions than has previously been available. Clearly it’s at an incubation stage, but we are committed to working with partners in key verticals to understand what the business cases for those applications are and what the opportunities are. We are already spending quite considerable sums, not only in R&D but in exhibitions like IFA and ISE, where we had 8K taking a prominent position, to start showing to the market what the technology can do and discussing possible applications.” NON-BROADCAST MARKETS Content creation means different things to different people, and the fact that Sharp launches at IFA and ISE – which is more of an install show – makes you think that non-broadcast markets are also on their minds, as Sid explains: “Sharp is attending NAB and I’ll also look to exhibit at a

European broadcast show somewhere but for Sharp, it’s a learning experience. Clearly the professional market is still adopting 4K both in terms of a resolution to display and a resolution to move around networks with the bandwidth that’s available – it’s still in the early stages of getting to grips with 8K. Moving 8K around in a broadcast transmission sense is probably a long way off. “If I assess the enthusiasm we had at ISE where we had resellers from medical, automotive, corporate reception areas where they are super- excited about what this technology could do for them, whether it’s just simply showing off in the reception sense or whether in an R&D sense, showing images and components going through various processes and gaining insight in to what’s going on. So if you think about medical diagnostics, we had medical research resellers who were really excited how this sort of technology could help diagnosis. “We’ve got a bag full of leads from ISE and will continue to support those leads. Broadcast and production is not an area that we are experts in, but we’ll learn from NAB and we’ll learn from further sales and marketing activities in Europe.” Sharp’s current camera form factor isn’t going to change in the short-term, but might react to the markets that it has been exposed to. The company is presently on this fact-finding exercise. “If there’s a

BELOW The camera’s form

factor isn’t going to change short-term.

WE HAD MEDICAL RESEARCH RESELLERS WHO WERE REALLY EXCITED HOW THIS SORT OF TECHNOLOGY COULD HELP DIAGNOSIS

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MAY 2018 DEFINITION

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