Thomson Wins Two 2008 Technical and Engineering Emmy Awards

The National Academy of
Television Arts & Sciences has awarded two 2008 Technical & Engineering
Emmy Awards to Thomson Corporate Research teams in Villingen and Hanover, Germany,
and the Grass Valley
division, headquartered in Nevada City,
CA. The teams will receive
awards for, respectively, impact in enhancing the
consumer viewing experience and significant contributions to the
state-of-the-art in television engineering.

Including the two awards to be presented in
January, Thomson has been awarded a total of 22 “Technical Emmys.”

“Thomson has been and continues to be a
pioneer in file-based production through Grass Valley and a major contributor
to the development and enhancement of the HDMI interface specification through
our Corporate Research activity,” says Vince Pizzica, SVP of strategy, technology
& marketing. “We are honored to once again be awarded a
Technical & Engineering Emmy Award, this time for contributions to
television engineering. This reflects the continuous innovation at the core of
Thomson.”
Strong Supporter of the HDMI Protocol

Thomson’s research efforts in development of
the HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) helped drive its adoption
within the European consumer-electronics industry. As one of the HDMI
founders, Thomson has been cited for its work on development of its
enabling technology and standardization for consumer video and audio products
outside the U.S.
More than 850 companies from consumer-electronics and information-technology industries
worldwide have fully adopted HDMI because it simplifies the task of connecting
electronic devices from different manufacturers.

The first version of HDMI was shown at the CES
convention in 2003. The interface and protocol were developed by a group of
seven companies (Hitachi,
Panasonic [formerly Matsushita], Philips, Silicon Image, Sony, Thomson, and
Toshiba), known as the HDMI Founders.

Basing HDMI on a transmission technology originally
developed by Silicon Image for use in the DVI interface for the PC domain, the
group of consumer-electronics companies developed the full video, audio, and
control transmission for the electronics environment in the home. As a
result, HDMI has been implemented in millions of consumer devices (TV sets,
set-top boxes, DVD players, PCs, and more).
Pioneering File-Based Standards

Sharing its award with the Society of Motion
Picture & Television Engineers, the Grass Valley
business group is being recognized for its lead effort in the “Development and
Standardization of File Formats for Video and Audio.” Specifically, the
company’s engineers led the development of the General eXchange Format (GXF),
which enables third-party equipment to exchange content files with Grass
Valley products over IT networks
or on IT media. GXF was
standardized by SMPTE in 2001 as
SMPTE

360M.

When the first broadcast video servers were shipped
more than 10 years ago, Grass
Valley engineers realized
that IT-based connectivity would be fundamental to customers’ success and
highlighted the importance of having file-interchange standards that customers
could rely on. This led to the submission of the GXF format to SMPTE in 1997 to
facilitate transfer of compressed video files over data networks and for
archiving those streams on IT data-storage devices. This file format is now in
use in hundreds of facilities around the world and has helped stimulate
development of other protocols, such as the Media Exchange Format (MXF).

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