Two companies familiar to Display Daily readers won engineering Emmy Awards recently for their work on JPEG2000 (J2K), intoPIX and Barco. Each company received a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for its work on JPEG2000 standardization and interoperability within the framework of the Video Services Forum (VSF).
The Television Academy and its New York-based sister organization, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), joined together on January 8th at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas to make the awards, although the winners had been announced earlier. Appropriately enough, this was right at the start of the International CES.
intoPIX is a provider of JPEG2000 compression IP-cores and received its Emmy Award for breakthroughs in the Standardization and Productization of transporting video with JPEG2000 Broadcast Profile in MPEG-2 TS over IP Networks.
“An Emmy Award is the recognition of technical leadership in the media and entertainment industry”, said Gael Rouvroy, CTO and founder of intoPIX. “We are proud to be honored with this award along with our colleagues in the VSF for our work in the development of TR-01 J2K interoperability recommendations. This recognition further validates our pioneering work in developing best-in-class video compression solutions for migrating Broadcast and Pro-AV industries to an IP future based ecosystem”.
Barco Silex received its Emmy Award in the ‘Standardization and Productization of JPEG2000 Interoperability’ category. The Barco Silex video team played a key role in the VSF J2K Activity Group, culminating in the release of a Technical Recommendation for `Transport of JPEG2000 broadcast profile video in MPEG-2 TS over IP’ last April. The document looks to facilitate interoperability between equipment produced by different manufacturers and specifies profiles that help ensure that signals generated by one device are received and interpreted correctly by another.
In addition to intoPIX and Barco, the Video Services Forum itself plus Media Links, Nevion, DVBlink, Inc., Harris Broadcast Corporation (Imagine Communications), Ericsson and Artel Video Systems Inc. were given awards for their JPEG2000 work.
In addition to the JPEG 2000 awards, several other significant awards were given to familiar names. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) won the Philo T. Farnsworth Award, which honors an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have significantly impacted television technology and engineering.
SMPTE was founded in 1916 under the chairmanship of inventor Charles F. Jenkins as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE). Early SMPE television developments included a 1923 paper by Jenkins himself on his imaging system and a 1926 paper from Bell Labs on their system. The Society changed its name in 1950 to reflect the growing importance of television. The Society was founded to develop standards for motion pictures and continues to be the primary source of standards for television and motion pictures in the US. SMPTE will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2016.
Barbara Lange and Larry Thorpe at the Emmy Awards CeremonySMPTE Executive Director Barbara Lange accepted the award for SMPTE and said, “For nearly one hundred years, it has been the pioneering thinking of our members and volunteers who make television innovation possible so that consumers can enjoy a quality motion image. Technologies, such as the color bars, HD-SDI, as well as our latest work in UHD, high dynamic range, immersive audio and tactile essence, are the result of technology leaders coming together to standardize and educate the industry. And like Farnsworth before us, this work will continue to expand the boundaries of the television ecosystem as the industry and consumers demand more from a multi-platform environment. I know that 100 years from now, SMPTE will continue to be an integral part of the moving image technology ecosystem”.
Larry Thorpe, Senior Fellow at Canon USA and a Life Fellow of SMPTE, won the Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors a living individual whose ongoing contributions have significantly affected the state of television technology and engineering.
Thorpe had previously been head of HDTV market development at Sony Electronics. He has published numerous papers on camera technology and HDTV in addition to serving as an advisor to the Advanced Television Systems Committee, the Federal Communications Commission and SMPTE. A graduate of the College of Technology in Dublin, he began his career with the BBC in London.
Congratulations to all of the Emmy Awards winners! – Matthew Brennesholtz
