[April 12, 2012]

Paving the Way for Ultra High Definition Television

ATEME, a global provider of compression solutions for Broadcast and Broadband, announced today the launch of an ambitious research program to reduce the bandwidth required for the delivery of Ultra High Definition Television using High Efficiency Video Coding. HEVC is the latest compression standard developed jointly by ISO/MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) and ITU-T/ VCEG (Video Coding Experts Group). Currently a draft, it is expected to be submitted for final standardization approval in January 2013 as MPEG-H Part 2.

The primary goal of the 4EVER program is to pave the way for the delivery of an enhanced high-definition television experience to viewers regardless of the viewing context (in the home, on the go, in public places and cinemas…), in a practical and inexpensive way. Initially a large part of the research effort will be invested in the evaluation of the television experience enhancement that can be offered from not just higher resolutions, but also higher frame rates, increased color depth, surround sound, and more.

ATEME's objective beyond this program s the development of an industrial - efficient - affordable - deployable implementation of HEVC. An encoding system that broadcasters and service providers can rely on for large scale field trials all the way to commercial deployments of Ultra HDTV.

4EVER program members include Orange (News - Alert) Labs, ATEME, france télévisions, GlobeCast, TeamCast, Technicolor and Doremi, as well as the Télécom ParisTech and INSA-IETR University labs.

The consortium expects to demonstrate a first complete Ultra HD production and transmission chain within one year, and several field trials are planned throughout the 4EVER project for sports events, music concerts and other live shows.

About ATEME

ATEME (www.ateme.com) is a world leading provider of MPEG-4 / H.264 and MPEG-2 bandwidth efficient compression technology. ATEME encoding solutions are deployed widely for broadcast contribution links, digital TV distribution networks, multi-screen live streaming, OTT and VOD applications.

About 4EVER

The 4EVER project (www.4ever-project.com) aims at researching, developing and promoting a better video Quality of Experience and putting premium audiovisual content access within everyone's reach thanks to:

• HEVC (future MPEG/ITU standard) codec development
• Ultra High Definition new format definition and qualification

Whether it is High Definition on mobile and ADSL networks, or Ultra High Definition over fiber or terrestrial to the home, the 4EVER consortium considers the entire production and delivery chain, and aims for visible quality gains for all viewers.

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