Fraunhofer HHI, Huawei, MediaTek, Nokia, Qualcomm Inc., Samsung, and Sony announced they are celebrating the receipt by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) of a 2017 Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for work on the development of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. Fraunhofer HHI, Huawei, MediaTek, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Sony, as members of the JCT-VC, were contributors to the development of HEVC, a specification that enables efficient delivery in ultrahigh-definition (UHD) content over multiple distribution channels.
The standard has emerged as the primary format for delivery of full 10-bit UHD video, and it also supports high-dynamic-range and wide-color-gamut technology. The new HEVC compression coding format has been adopted, or selected for adoption, by essentially all UHD television distribution channels, including terrestrial, satellite, cable, fiber, and wireless, and it is supported in virtually all UHD television viewing devices, including traditional televisions, tablets, and mobile phones. A unique balance of high compression, HDR capability, reasonable complexity, and power consumption have made HEVC essential for a range of products.
The JCT-VC is a standardization team composed of members from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The group was formed in 2010 by the ITU Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
Fraunhofer HHI, Huawei, MediaTek, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Sony said they were happy to contribute to the JCT-VC and wish further great success to the ITU and ISO/IEC in their developments of additional industry-friendly video coding standards in the future.
At least fourteen companies, including Fraunhofer HHI, Huawei, MediaTek, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, and Sony, were key contributors to this work within the JCT-VC, and altogether about 200 companies and research institutions participated to some degree in the HEVC project. The award was presented at a ceremony in Hollywood, CA, on October 25, and was accepted on behalf of the JCT-VC by its cochairs Gary J. Sullivan of Microsoft, and Jens-Rainer Ohm of RWTH Aachen University together with Chaesub Lee, the Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau and Karen Higginbottom, the outgoing chair of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1. The photo shows Thomas Wiegand, Benjamin Bross, and Detlev Marpe of Fraunhofer HHI at the Emmy Awards ceremony.
The Primetime Emmy Engineering Award goes to an individual, company, or organization for developments in engineering that are either so extensive an improvement on existing methods or so innovative in nature that they materially affect the transmission, recording, or reception of television.