DVB used its IBC2026 programme to examine what television discovery might require when software agents, rather than a single platform recommendation engine, decide what viewers see. The concept treats discovery as negotiation among agents representing publishers, audiences and advertisers.
The proposed direction combines service discovery through DVB-I with AI negotiation and cryptographically signed claims. A publisher agent might describe availability and rights, a viewer agent could express preferences and accessibility needs, and every assertion would need to be attributable and auditable.
Moving ranking and discovery into an interoperable layer could reduce dependence on one proprietary content shelf. It also moves identity, rights, policy and trust into the protocol design, where ambiguous claims or delegated permissions could otherwise become system-wide failure points.
This is a discussion topic, not an approved DVB specification or shipping implementation. No message schema, identity framework, privacy model or conflict-resolution mechanism has been selected. Existing recommendation and entitlement systems remain the production baseline.
