Grass Valley plans to offer two white papers as part of the Broadcast Engineering Conference next week in Las Vegas to address "key issues for the future of broadcasting." Its topics target how new advances in compression algorithms can double the number of HD channels, as well as how 1080p production and transmission scenarios would be technically possible. (Right now virtually all 1080p content is Blu-ray Disc.)
In a 3:30 p.m. BEC session on Tuesday, April 13 (LVCC Rm. S228), Are Olafsen, Gray Valley's director of Satellite Headend Solutions, will discuss the choice of codecs and wrappers for creating 3G content workflow for delivering what the company said will be "a new level in high-definition quality."
"With U.S. broadcasters mandated to use MPEG-2 over ATSC to provide all over-the-air transmissions, the accepted norm has been one high-definition and one or two standard-definition channels, as this has been all that the bandwidth will accept," Grassy Valley said. "With households increasingly using large-flat panel displays, [SD] channels provide an unsatisfactory viewing experience, so there is considerable interest in broadcasting two HD channels in the same bandwidth."
In a second session, Jean-Louis Diascorn, product manager for encoders at Grass Valley, will detail how new-generation HD encoders can achieve better compression rates by harnessing optimum outputs from the MPEG-2 compression scheme. Diascorn's releases his paper at 2:30pm on Wednesday, April 14 (Rm. S228).
Grass Valley plans to demo "practical demonstrations" of the new compression technology at its exhibit booth throughout the show (Rm. SL106).
