The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF, or the Oesterreichischer Rundfunk) has selected AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV encoders/decoders HV9100 Series for their first HD sports coverage.

 

The HV9100 series is developed by NTT Electronics Corporation. With the help of NTT’s HV9100 Series AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV encoders/decoders ORF was able to broadcast the recently concluded Euro 2008 event, UEFA championship marches in HD. This allowed the ORF to offer real-time HD transmissions through the high-quality ATM network of Telecom Austria.

 

The company claims that the HV9100 Series ability to support AVC/H.264 High 4:2:2 Profile (8bit) (*1), high bitrate (55Mbps), HD live broadcast was offered with superb video quality.

 

The Oesterreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) is Austria's media enterprise. The ORF broadcasts two 24-hour television programs, three nation-wide radio programs and nine regional radio programs from the provincial studios. NTT Electronics deals video compression technologies, which enables the transmission, editing and broadcasting of high-quality videos.

 

Hetfleisch, a technical manager at ORF said, “The use of the HV9100 Series allowed ORF to present the first HDTV broadcast by a public broadcaster in the German-speaking world with MPEG4 4:2:2 contribution of the signal. With such a vivid and intense viewing experience, ORF could show the best HDTV pictures in its history of football broadcasting. Given our experience with EURO 2008, we will continue to use the HV9100 Series for major sports events in the future.”

 

According to the company, The HV9100 series supports both HD (1080i / 720p) and SD (480i / 576i) and a maximum of two audio systems, for a total of eight-channel encoding and decoding. The HV9100 series was also used by many broadcasters and carriers for live coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

 

The encoder/decoder can provide the specified performance and quality by using NTT Electronics's cutting edge SARAENC / SARADEC LSI and as it can support both the MPEG-2 and AVC/H.264 video compression formats, the HV9100 fits any situation in this period of transition between any formats.

 

NTT Electronics’ HV9100 series will be on display in Amsterdam from Sept. 12-16 at IBC 2008, Europe’s largest broadcasting technology event (Booth No.1-B18). For more info visit www.orf.at and http://www.nel-world.com/products/video/index.html