UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

UHDTV: VOICES & CHOICES EBU GENEVA, 25 & 26 NOVEMBER 2013 SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES & SYNOPSES

Introduction

Simon Fell (EBU)

Simon Fell is the Director of Technology & Innovation at the EBU, a position he took up in August 2013. Mr Fell has more than 35 years’ experience in senior broadcasting technology roles, including at British broadcaster ITV, where he was Director of Future Technologies (2008-2009) and Controller of Emerging Technologies (2004-2006). From 1991-2004 Mr Fell worked for Carlton Television, the ITV franchise holder for the London region, where he held several executive roles linked to operations and emerging technologies. Mr Fell was until August 2013 the Chairman of the Technical Council at the Digital Television Group, the industry association for digital television in the UK. His career had previously brought him into contact with the EBU, where he sat on the Technical Committee on behalf of UK broadcasters between 2006 and 2009. He is now responsible for steering EBU Technology & Innovation in its mission of being an indispensable partner to EBU Members, driving media innovation and integration, setting standards and defining and sharing best practices in media production and delivery.

Yvonne Thomas (EBU)

&

David Wood (EBU)

Yvonne Thomas graduated in Television Technologies and Electronic Media Engineering from University of applied Science Wiesbaden (HSRM), Germany, in Oct. 2010. She received a prominent award of the ARD/ZDF Academy for her thesis in September 2011 at the IFA in Berlin. Following these studies she started beginning of 2011 to work at the EBU in the Technology & Innovation Department. Since then she is responsible for internal and external projects on 3D and Future Television technologies, such as UHDTV or LED studio lighting. Yvonne coordinates the EBU`s Strategic Program BeyondHD in which she led the creation of UHD‐1 and 3D test content. These were unique experience sand early bird projects that helps EBU members and research institutes to conduct further tests on formats beyond HD (Codecs, displays, compression etc.). Further to this the involvement in several standardization bodies, such as DVB or SMPTE, build the basis for more political discussions and decision making for UHD technologies, which have been taken place for example at the DVB-EBU meeting or the UHDTV “voices&choices” workhop of the EBU in 2013, which Yvonne was responsible for. She was also involved in several EU FP7 projects (Muscade, 3D VIVANT, P2Pnext).

David Wood is Consultant, Technology and Innovation for the EBU, and is chair of the ITU-R WP6C, the World Broadcasting Union’s Technical Committee, and the DVB CM-UHDTV and CM-3DTV groups. David is also a Life Fellow of the SMPTE and a recipient of the SMPTE Progress Medal. He has worked for many years in baseband television and radio systems and quality evaluation methodology.

Katy Noland (BBC)

Katy graduated from the Tonmeister course in Music and Sound Recording at the University of Surrey in 2003. She went on to receive an MSc in Digital Signal Processing from Queen Mary University of London, and joined the Centre for Digital Music there to study for a PhD in automatic analysis of tonal harmony, which she received in 2009. In 2006 she also became a teaching fellow in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Queen Mary, teaching audio and video signal processing. After 6 months as a visiting researcher at a leading consumer electronics manufacturer, Katy joined BBC Research and Development in 2011. She specialises in how the human visual system perceives digital video, with applications in video format specification and conversion.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

Tom Morrod (IHS)

Tom is the senior director for consumer electronics and media technology research at IHS. Responsible for all research across TV sets and consumer electronics, set-top boxes, pay TV networks, professional video technology, video distribution, technical service delivery employed by service providers and video consumer electronics. He regularly provides presentations and insights to major international organisations and blue-chip companies. Tom has presented at numerous international conferences over the years, contributed articles to many newspapers and trade magazines, and worked as a consultant and advisor to many of the largest technology, consumer electronics, content creation and distribution companies in the world, as well as to the investor and legal community involved in these industries. Specific topics of research include studio and capture equipment, professional storage, transmission and distribution, managed service for professional video, broadcaster and pay TV operator delivery, multiscreen and multi-platform distribution, set-top boxes and professional CPE, television sets and retail hardware, as well as specific work on IP and licensing.

SESSION 1: WHERE ARE WE NOW?

Hans Hoffmann (EBU)

Dr. Hans Hoffmann is Head of the unit on Media Fundamentals and production technology in the EBU Technology and Development department. On his past activities: he joined the Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik (IRT) in 1993 as research staff in new Television production technologies. In February 2000 he moved as Senior Engineer to the Technical Department of the European Broadcasting Union in Geneva. He has led a number of international projects of the EBU in the area of file based production, HDTV, 3DTV, and digital workflows. He is also very much involved in the SMPTE, and other standardization organizations. Currently, he is the Engineering Vice President of the SMPTE.

Thomas Bause Mason

(NBC Universal)

Thomas Bause Mason is Director for Advanced Digital Media Technology in Advanced Engineering at NBCUniversal. As part of the Advanced Technology Team, Thomas researches and implements emerging technologies as well as standards for file based workflows for production, post production and distribution, including traditional broadcast, cable and the web. In addition, Thomas works with many different NBCUniversal operational teams, implementing standards and technology at the corporate level. Formerly, Thomas was with Ascent Media where he ran encoding and DAM system ingest operations and helped business development with implementing new media workflows. Previously, Thomas worked in Germany as a programmer developing process visualization software and database solutions. He also managed a Quality Control department for several private broadcast networks at a large broadcast service provider. Thomas has a bachelor’s degree in Media Technology. He is a SMPTE member since 2007 and is currently the co-chair for the SMPTE 35PM Media Packaging and Interchange Technology Committee as well as the Chair of the SMPTE Studio Group on UHDTV Ecosystems.

Virginie Drugeon

(Panasonic)

Virginie Drugeon is an engineer at Panasonic R&D Center Germany near Frankfurt. She received her engineering degree in September 2006 from the ENST (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications), Paris, France. She has been working for Panasonic for 7 years in the area of video coding and transmission. She has participated to JCT-VC meetings for the standardization of HEVC/H.265. She is now responsible of DVB 3DTV and UHDTV related standardization activities at Panasonic R&D Center Germany.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

Simon Tuff (BBC)

Simon has worked for the BBC for 25 years and is currently the Principal Technologist for the national radio networks. His current projects include building a file based digital archive for Radio's content and metadata, providing new tools to manage the BBC's Choir and Orchestras as well as working out what an IP connected infrastructure means for our studio centres. Simon also leads work to make the BBC's operations and technology more sustainable and is collaborating with the EBU, the Forum for Advanced Media in Europe [FAME] and others to build the standards for a viable next generation audio technology to accompany 4k UHDTV.

Dietrich Westerkamp

(Technicolor)

Dietrich Westerkamp graduated from University Hannover. He then worked several years as research assistant on data compression for images. Since 1985 he is with Technicolor (ex-Thomson), currently as Director World-wide Standards Coordination. In the past 28 years he has been involved in many projects to improve TV systems, these range from HD-MAC, PALplus, DVC (the standard for digital consumer camcorders), and MPEG toward DVB and HDMI today. In DVB he serves as treasurer and an industry member at the Steering Board since several years. Within DIGITALEUROPE he chaired the HDTV issue group that developed the HDready and HD TV product logos. His activities currently focus on UHDTV and HDMI. In 2009 he received an Emmy Award for the development of the HDMI standard.

Martin Fähnrich

(Panasonic)

Martin Faehnrich was born in 1967, and degreed in telecommunication electronics ('Nachrichtentechnik') in 1995. After working as a Team-Leader of TV signal-processing team with Panasonic, in 2002 Martin Fähnrich was appointed to establish standardisation activities, fostering the companies visibility and European activities at organisations and associations as Assistant Manager. Since 2008 he is Manager of Standardisation at Panasonic Langen Development Centre, and represents the activities of Panasonic AVC Company in Europe.

Jim Helman (Movie Labs)

MovieLabs is a technology joint venture of the major Hollywood studios (Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner). As the founding CTO, Jim help establish MovieLabs and has led a range of projects related to digital content distribution. Jim headed the original design, implementation and deployment of the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) and is currently leading MovieLabs work on next generation video formats and security. Prior to joining MovieLabs, Jim held various engineering leadership positions at Silicon Valley companies. Jim has Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Applied Physics from Stanford University and a B.A. in Physics and Math from Washington University.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

SESSION 2: THE HARDWARE & ITS USERS

Paul Treleaven

(IABM)

Paul Treleaven obtained a First Class Honours Degree in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, London in 1972. He started his career in broadcast engineering with BBC Designs Department. His work included design of the interpolation system for the BBC’s ‘ACE’ four-field standards converter. In 1979, Treleaven co-founded Avitel, a company designing and manufacturing video, audio and timecode distribution and processing equipment. He continued with Avitel as Technical Director until 2001. Treleaven is a member of the International Association of Broadcasting Manufacturers’ Technical Task Group, representing the IABM at SMPTE and AES standards meetings and ABU technology committee meetings. He is also a member of the UK’s National Standards Body for IEC TC100. Treleaven has served as SMPTE International Region Governor and is a SMPTE Fellow. He is currently Co-Chair of the SMPTE Technology Committee on Metadata and Registers and contributes to other SMPTE standards groups.

Stefan Hofmann

(Panasonic)

In September 1992 Stefan has received the grade of communication and broadcast engineer. Right after completion of his university studies he joined Panasonic as a Service Engineer in the broadcast department. Between 1997 and 2000 he has taken over the technical overall responsibility of Panasonic’s European project business as a Product Manager in the broadcast domain. At the same time Stefan came into contact with the international standardization bodies like SMPTE, ITU and EBU. He actively served for many years Panasonic’s SMPTE activities and in parallel he is the technical window person for the EBU. In 2005 Stefan has focused his activities towards to business development, consulting and strategic planning within the European Broadcast market. In 2010 he has been elected as a board member of the FKTG and he is supporting Panasonic’s HD and 4k activities and representing the professional section of Panasonic at the Deutsche TV-Plattform and Digital Europe. In addition, he is responsible for Panasonic’s European studio camera and switcher business.

Mark Horton

(Ericsson)

Mark Horton MBA BA is Ericsson’s Strategic Product Manager Encoders, responsible for UHDTV. He has worked in Television and Film Production and Post-production since 1984, originally working in Studios as an Engineer, Vision Mixer and Editor. In 1990 he moved into Product Management at Sony Broadcast as was part of the team that launched Digital Betacam and Sonys digital post production product range. He subsequently worked at Quantel on compositing, non linear editing, color correction, film scanning and film recording. At Quantel Mark launched the first generation of 4K Digital Intermediate products for film. Mark then worked at Amberfin on file based workflows and contributed to the FIMS project. His products have spanned Linear and Non Linear editing, Film Scanning, Film and Video Compositing & Color Correction, Standards Conversion, Automated Quality Control, Transcoding and Encoding. These have won more than 25 major industry awards, including the British Governments Queens Award for Export Achievement and the IABM Peter Wayne Award. He is an elected member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Yoshiaki Shishikui

(NHK)

Yoshiaki Shishikui joined NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Tokyo, Japan, in 1983. Since 1986 he has been with NHK Science and Technology Research Laboratories, where he has been engaged in research on digital signal processing, picture coding, HDTV broadcasting systems, IPTV systems and advanced data broadcasting systems. Currently, he leads UHDTV research activities.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

Semir Nouri

(JVC)

Thomas Semir Nouri graduated from TH Darmstadt University in Germany with a title of Dipl.-Ing. in Telecommunications. Video technology has always been his primary interest. In 1992 he joined JVC Professional and has held many positions there from support to product management, marketing and sales, always with a strong focus on products and customer relations. Currently he is sales director for Germany and Austria.

Gavin Walker (Snell)

Gavin graduated from Southampton University with an honours degree in Electronic Engineering. He then joined Sony Broadcast where he learned the fundamentals of broadcast video engineering and contributed to a number of state of the art technologies including D1 VTR, worlds first 3D non linear high definition DVE and various RAM recorders. Gavin then joined Snell & Wilcox to lead the HD and Advanced Technology group before ultimately becoming CTO. Following the merger with Pro-Bel he took up his current position as Director of Technology Strategy.

Fadi Malak

(DTS)

Fadi Malak, Corporate Strategy and Development, DTS, Inc: a key member of the CSD team, Fadi Malak is responsible for defining the strategy and go-to-market plan for DTS’ next-generation platforms that require a complex and coordinated ecosystem play. Mr. Malak’s current focus is on the broadcast market strategy and DTS’ new object-based audio solutions, heading strategic partnerships, international standards work, and defining new solutions architectures. Before helping DTS create a market for object-based audio, Mr. Malak held the position of Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at SRS Labs, where his pioneering work on audio objects, personalization and interactivity, led to the filing of patents, and contributed to the value proposition that triggered the acquisition by DTS in 2012. Mr. Malak began his audio technology company tour at Dolby Laboratories, where he spent over 4 years helping Dolby break into new markets, including next generation broadcast systems. A broadcast industry veteran, he also spent 6 years with Harmonic, as Director of Business Development, helping the company launch the H.264 compression market and IPTV. In the 1990s, Mr. Malak began his audio/video technologies career at Apple computer, as a Multimedia Technology Evangelist. He has written several papers, contributed to publications, spoken at numerous industry forums, and participated as a member of the DVB (AVC TM), SCTE (DVS NVT), and the DVD Forum. He served on the Board of the MPEG-IF and the 3DAA, and currently is an active member of the ATSC 3.0’s S34-2 sub-group and S6-3 (committee responsible for CALM Act spec), SMPTE, MPEG, and EBU’s FAR-BWF group and the FAME group.

Florian Martin

(ARRI)

Florian 'Utsi' Martin, Lead Digital Colorist for ARRI Cine Technik in Munich. He currently develops "workflows" and "color-pipelines" for film projects and is grading feature-films. At ARRI he developed a complete "color-pipeline" from set to the final DCP for the first feature-film shot on the ALEXA camera, "Anonymous" (directed by Roland Emmerich) and completed the grading. 2001 Florian 'Utsi' Martin moved to New Zealnd where he worked for over three years as Lead Digital colorist on the Trilogy "The Lord of the Rings". After these years he worked as freelance colorist worldwide. Since 2010 he is part of the digital workflow solutions team at ARRI in Munich with emphasis on grading, VFX and workflows.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

Paul Treleaven (IABM)

See above

Darren Fawcett

(Pace)

Darren Fawcett, Chief Technical Engineer (CTE) Darren, is a key member of the Pace team. Integral in shaping the strategy that has transitioned the company to a STB vendor, to one that delivers solutions and converged services to the World’s largest Pay TV operators. Since 2010, in his role as CTE he has been responsible for Pace International’s technology portfolio, including the development and launch of enabling platforms needed to meet the converged market space, e.g. Media Gateways and Client Hardware and Software. Darren has over 20 years’ experience in the communication and media sector where he has specialised in leading technology teams and worked with key stakeholders, and standards bodies to ensure seamless transition of ideas through to solutions.

John Adam (Samsung)

John Adam is a graduate in Physics from the University of Glasgow who has been involved in Digital TV since the first European launches in the late 90's. Prior to his current role, John was employed by Sony and EMC2 where he held a variety of European Product Management roles with responsibilities ranging from Consumer Set Top Box through to MHEG/MHP Play-out and Internet Streaming and Distribution Systems. John has been employed by Samsung since 2002. He is currently Head of Business Development and Industrial Affairs at Samsung Electronics Research Institute in the UK. In his current capacity, John leads a team who engage with European Broadcasters on their future service and business plans and work with local Government Regulators and Standards Bodies on digital media regulation and standardisation across Europe. John represents Samsung on a number of external industry bodies including:

• Samsung Representative on DVB Steering Board • Samsung Representative on HbbTV Steering Board • Vice President of the Digital Terrestrial Action Group (DigiTAG) • Board Member of the CI Plus Limited Liability Partnership

Takehiro Sugimoto

(NHK)

Takehiro Sugimoto received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronic engineering from University of Tokyo, Japan, in 1999 and 2001, respectively. He also received the Ph.D. degree in information processing from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2013. He joined NHK in 2001 and worked as an audio engineer in the Programs Engineering Center. He moved to Science & Technology Research Laboratories of NHK, and has been working on the acoustic transducer, the audio coding, and the sound field reproduction. He is also engaged in MPEG Audio standardization.

James Goel

James Goel has worked on digital video processing algorithms, digital logic and semiconductor design for the past 25 years. He has held various management positions and was vice-president of engineering at Silicon Optix before it was acquired by Qualcomm Inc. At Qualcomm, he is the Director of Engineering for the Digital Video Processing team as is responsible for the HQV video processor used in mobile and DTV products. He holds two patents and a Bachelor of Applied Science degree from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

(Qualcomm)

SESSION 3: TESTS & RESULTS

Dagmar Driesnack

(IRT)

Dagmar Driesnack graduated in Media Technology at the University of Applied Sciences in Mittweida. In her diploma thesis at IRT, she focused on quality investigations of HD codecs and on a comparison of HDTV formats. In summer 2006, she joined IRT as a research engineer and is now active in the department “Production Systems Television” working on topics like compression in production, contribution and distribution for HDTV and beyond HD. She was leading the EU funded project DIOMEDES at IRT. She chaired the former EBU D/HDrec-group and now vice chair of the SP BHD. She is also a member of the DVB project and the FKT.

Jérôme Fournier (Orange)

Jérôme Fournier received a PhD in signal and image processing from the University of Rennes in 1995. The main aim of his thesis was the subjective evaluation of stereoscopic television. This led to his participation in the European project, RACE DISTIMA. After that, he worked on video compression for video communications at LEP (Philips Research Laboratory in France) and participated in the standardization process of H.263. In 1997, he joined France Telecom R&D and worked on the subjective evaluation of video sequences and on the implementation of standardized video codecs like MPEG-4 Part 2 and H.264. From 2004-2006, he was in charge of HDTV activities until the deployment of France Telecom HDTV service in June 2006. Since 2006, Jérôme has been working on the deployment of the Orange stereoscopic 3DTV as well as on the assessment of innovative 3DTV depth-based video formats as part of the European project, 3D4YOU. Now, he is mainly involved in the subjective evaluation of Ultra HD video formats recently standardized at ITU-R as well as the new video compression technology called HEVC.

Andy Quested

(BBC)

Andy Quested was a much sought-after editor with BBC Resources for many years, working on programmes as diverse as The Human Body and Keeping Up Appearances but about ten years ago Andy gave up the life of a hermit editor and moved into the sunshine and bright lights of the BBC Technology Group. Since 2005, Andy has been leading the BBC’s high definition technology strategy as Head of Technology for HD and leading the work for the BBC’s automated quality control project. He also chairs the EBU strategic Quality Control programme. During 2010 the BBC started a series of transmission and production 3D trials. As part of this Andy has also taken on the role of Head of Technology for the BBC’s 3D output and strategy. Part of his role is to be part of the process of developing standards for 3DTV production and international programme exchange. As part of the process of developing 3DTV standards, Andy was asked to become an ITU Special Rapporteur with the task of examining the current world 3D production status and providing a report with recommendation at the November 2013 ITU meetings in Geneva. Andy also chairs a new ITU Rapporteurs group examining the case for an extended image dynamic range for the Ultra High Definition standard.

Richard Salmon is a Lead Research Engineer at BBC R&D, in London, UK, with particular expertise in TV colorimetry and display technology. Having been involved with HDTV research since 1992, he has a deep technical understanding of the entire image chain from the camera, though compression systems, to the viewer’s impression of the displayed image. He inspired and led work within the BBC on higher frame rates, culminating in a very successful demonstrations at IBC in 2008 and 2013. He is chairman of the EBU Displays group, and is also active on “Beyond HD” topics in the EBU, the UK Digital TV Group, DVB and SMPTE, and a member of SID and IET.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

Richard Salmon

(BBC)

Adi Kouadio

(EBU)

Adi Kouadio obtained his B.Sc and M.Sc. in communication systems at the Swiss Federal institute of Technology in Lausanne – EPFL - (Switzerland). After working for Fastcom Technology SA on several projects related to video based object recognition, he entered the EBU Technology and Innovation department in 2007 where he is responsible for video and display technologies studies and proof of concepts for broadcast applications. In addition, he acts as a technical advisor to the Eurovision Network where he was significantly involved in the network technology migration from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 H.264/AVC. He is also involved in establishing operational practices/trials for new services such as 3DTV and UHDTV for major events. He has coordinated several EBU project groups (Cameras, Displays, MXF, 3G-SDI, contribution over IP, Future TV systems …). He is now leading core investigations on UHDTV including HEVC and High Frame Rate within the EBU and the Broadcast Technology Future’s group. He represents EBU’s interest within JPEG, MPEG and DVB working groups on video and is a SMPTE Member.

SESSIONS 4: BREAKOUTS

Yvonne Thomas (EBU)

See above

Paul Treleaven (IABM)

See above

Rainer Schaefer

(IRT)

Rainer Schaefer (born 1961) is General Manager TV at the IRT, the R&D institute of the public German broadcasters (incl. ORF in Austria and SRG in Switzerland) since May 2009.

He joined the IRT in 1986 after studying electrical engineering at the technical university of Munich. During his career, he worked in several positions as hard- and software developer, project leader, senior engineer and as head of the TV production systems section. Working areas were analogue and digital television, video coding and DVB, production chains, standards converters, interactive television and integrated media production systems.

He is regularly active as participant or in chairing positions in DVB, EBU and other national or international bodies, as well as EU projects.

David Wood (EBU)

See above

Simon Tuff (BBC)

See above

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

SESSION 5: STRATEGIES & OUTLOOK

Giorgio Dimino

(RAI)

Giorgio Dimino RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, Research Centre of Turin. He is head of the research unit on digital archives and television production. His interests include the application of information technology in the broadcast production chain, the design of modern media archives and the evaluation of technical quality in video and audio signals. He is chair of the EBU Strategic Programme BeyondHD and co-chair of the FIMS Task Force.

Stephan Heimbecher

(Sky Deutschland)

Stephan Heimbecher (born 1967) has been working at Sky Deutschland since July 2002. As Head of Innovations & Standards in Technology, his post involves representing Sky on national and international committees, technical work with major Hollywood studios plus technical innovation management tasks within Sky Deutschland. The electrical engineering graduate began his career as research associate at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT), the research and development institute for the public broadcasters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. After extensive work experience with DAB technology and audio coding, he dedicated his work to the standardisation of Digital TV for several years. Stephan then joined Top5 MediaConnection in 2001 (a company of the earlier KirchGruppe) as manager within the consulting department. At Premiere/Sky Mr. Heimbecher has significantly been involved in the launch of PVR, HD and Sky 3D. His current major focus is Ultra HD and Stephan Heimbecher serves as chairman of a respective project group of the German TV Platform in that regard. Since 2003 Mr. Heimbecher is also member of the DVB Steering Board.

Yoshiaki Shishikui (NHK)

See above

Jim Helman (Movies Labs)

See above

Ludovic Noblet

(Dolby)

Ludovic Noblet is Senior Director, Principal Architect for the Broadcast business group at Dolby Laboratories. In his role, he is in charge of audio and video technology strategy, planning and architecture, working closely with standardization bodies and consortia. Ludovic started his career in 1992 at the Thomson Electronics Research Laboratories. He was in charge of designing video compression integrated circuits and systems for the introduction of digital broadcast TV technologies, first in the US and then in Europe. In 2001, he took part into the very first IPTV and mobile TV projects, revisiting how video compression could be implemented for that purpose. Ludovic joined France Telecom in 2004 as an IPTV architect where he managed the end-to-end introduction of high definition and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC into the Orange IPTV service. He went on to be responsible for the Video Compression R&D lab at Orange Labs in 2006. Ludovic graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique de l’Universite de Nantes, France, in 1992 with a specialty in signal processing and real-time systems.

Chris Johns has been with BSkyB since its inception in 1989 having started his career in broadcast with the BBC. Chris formed part of the initial technical team tasked with launching Sky’s multi-channel analogue satellite offering. As Chief Engineer, Chris has been at the forefront of delivering broadcast functionality to the platform such as the Multi channel Digital Playout facilities, Dolby Digital audio, Server based solutions and Compression Systems. Having played a key role in Sky's HD launch and design of its High Definition infrastructure, he continues to oversee the product quality and took a lead in the capabilities of delivering 3D broadcasts to the home user over existing infrastructures and through Sky's HD PVR products.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

Chris Johns

(BSkyB)

Sitting on many Broadcast groups and societies, Chris is the current Chair of the UK section of the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and Honorary Fellow of the BKSTS. He has chaired and presented papers and works together with standards and recommendations bodies both in the UK and Europe. As part of Sky’s Technology department, Chris is now helping Sky enhance the entertainment delivered across a multitude of different platforms from a common core whilst maintaining the audio and visual quality the customer has come to expect from today’s technologies. As part of this remit he continues to evolve many new experiences and the associated technologies to deliver better image and audio across the consumer’s many devices.

Sebastiano Trigila

(FUB)

Sebastiano Trigila has been working with Fondazione Ugo Bordoni (FUB), Italy, since 1982, after taking his master degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, in 1980. His early years of work were devoted to research on network protocol analysis and formal verification and on data network system testing. He then became leader of a research group in telecommunications software technologies. Throughout the Nineties he was involved, mainly with coordinating roles, in several projects on Advanced Intelligent Network and Open Service Architectures carried out by consortia of European telecom operators, manufacturers and research institutes, under co-funding by the European Commission.

From 2002 up to now, he has been working in the field of digital television broadcasting, audio-video standards and platforms for multimedia interactive applications. He was the leader of a “Transition to DVB-T” project (2002-2006) sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and charged with planning, launching and evaluating DTT broadcasts and services in preparation of the subsequent analogue switch-off. He coordinated a T-Government programme (2005-2008), structured in six Projects awarded by FUB, on behalf of the Ministry of Communications, to consortia made of public administrations and industrial partners, for development and on-field trial of interactive services for the citizens. Since 2008, he has been involved, as manager or supervisor, in several ICT projects and in various international networking initiatives on behalf of the Directorate of Research of FUB.

He is the representative of FUB within HD Forum Italia, a non-profit organization devoted to the promotion, development and uptake of High Definition TV and forthcoming digital tv technologies. He was appointed founding president in the start-up phase of HD Forum Italia (2006-2007) and since after then he has been serving as deputy vicepresident. He has been contributing to technical volumes published by the HD Forum itself: a User Guide, the HD Book DTT (technical specifications of DTT receivers for the Italian horizontal market), the HD Book SAT (the same for SAT receivers). He is also a representative of HD Forum Italia, within FRAME.

He is a lecturer in several seminars, in Italy and abroad, on digital television technologies and services.

Aurora Mourelle

(Hispasat)

Aurora Mourelle graduated as Telecommunication Engineer at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid, specialized in Telecommunication Networks and Systems. Since 2011 she works at the Customer Engineering Department in Hispasat, where she takes part in system definition, network designs and other consultancy activities. She is also involved in management and development of national and international R&D projects, many of them related to future audiovisual services, such as H2B2VS (Celtic Program), JEDI (ITEA 2 Program), SIRENA and many others. She is also author of technical publications, the last of which was awarded “Best Young Professional Paper” at IBC 2013.

Brian Markwalter is senior vice president of research and standards for the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) ®, the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $202 billion U.S. consumer electronics industry and owner of the International CES. Markwalter is responsible for overseeing CEA’s ANSI-accredited standards development operation and extensive market research capability. Under Markwalter’s direction, CEA hosts more than 70 committees, subcommittees and working groups that produce standards used in millions of consumer devices. CEA’s market research has a rich 75 year history producing objective research, tracking sales data and forecasting trends.

UHDTV2013 – Speakers – 25/11/2013

Brian Markwalker

(CEA)

These programs have resulted in four Technology Emmy awards for CEA standards and give CEA members free access to nearly $1 million in annual market research. Markwalter holds five patents from prior work with Intellon Corporation, a home networking semiconductor company, and serves on a number of boards and government advisory committees. Markwalter received his bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and is a licensed professional engineer.

Hans Hoffmann (EBU)

Dr. Hans Hoffmann is Head of the unit on Media Fundamentals and production technology in the EBU Technology and Development department. On his past activities: he joined the Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik (IRT) in 1993 as research staff in new Television production technologies. In February 2000 he moved as Senior Engineer to the Technical Department of the European Broadcasting Union in Geneva. He has led a number of international projects of the EBU in the area of file based production, HDTV, 3DTV, and digital workflows. He is also very much involved in the SMPTE, and other standardization organizations. Currently, he is the Engineering Vice President of the SMPTE.

REVIEW & NEXT STEPS

Hans Hoffmann (EBU)

See above

Thomas Bause Mason (NBC Universal)

See above