SMPTE Elevates 6 Industry Leaders to Fellow Status

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), the organization whose standards work has supported a century of technological advances in entertainment technology, announced that this year - the Society's centennial year - it will elevate 16 industry leaders to the status of SMPTE Fellow. This honor is conferred on individuals who have, through their proficiency and contributions to the industry, attained an outstanding rank among members of the Society.

SMPTE 2016 Fellows

Fernando Bittencourt, CTO and General Director of Engineering at TV Globo

For 45 years, Fernando Bittencourt has headed overall engineering operations and set the technology vision for TV Globo, the biggest TV Network in Latin America, covering 98% of the Brazilian national territory. He has built a distinguished career at TV Globo, and his many achievements over this time include serving as the SMPTE Governor for EMEA and Central and South America Region, a council member of the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC), the broadcast vice president of Brazilian Society of Television and Telecommunication Engineers (SET), and commissioner to the Upper House of the Brazilian Congress in TV, media, and telecommunication regulatory and technological matters. As chair of the Digital TV Group created by the Association of Brazilian Broadcasters (ABERT), Bittencourt also drove the studies and recommendation that led to the adoption of the modified Sistema Brasileiro de Televis o Digital (ISDB-T) standard in Brazil, called Brazilian Digital Television System (SBTVD), which is now in the process of final implementation.

Tim Borer, Lead Engineer at BBC Research and Development

Tim Borer is one of the inventors of the Alchemist motion compensated standards converter and is a co-developer of the BBC/Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) Hybrid Log-Gamma HDR solution. As a lead engineer at British Broadcasting Corporation Research and Development (BBC R&D), he currently focuses on aspects of ultra-high-definition television (UHDTV) such as high-dynamic-range (HDR) and higher frame rates (HFR). Previously, Borer led the video compression team at BBC R&D that developed Dirac and the SMPTE VC-2 video compression standard. Before joining the BBC, he designed professional broadcasting equipment, including motion-compensated standards converters and compression equipment, for both Snell and Harris. Borer holds degrees in video processing, electronics, and physics. He is a Chartered Engineer (MIET) and is the inventor or co-inventor of 20 patents.

Paul E. Briscoe, Consultant at Televisionary Consulting

Paul E. Briscoe began his career as an engineer at CBC Television. Specializing in the emerging domains of digital television and computer-generated imagery (CGI), Briscoe helped design the Toronto Broadcasting Centre, an all-digital radio and TV production center utilizing the then-new serial digital interface (SDI) infrastructure, including the development of the custom routing switcher control system, all computer graphics facilities, distributed production resources, and overall facility systemization and timing. Today, he provides system, technology, design, and standards consultation. A creative and inventive technology and product designer, Briscoe has several patents granted and pending. He is a member of SMPTE and IEEE, participates in many SMPTE standards committees, and is a member of the board of managers and past chair of the SMPTE Toronto Section. Briscoe has delivered technical papers to conference and committee audiences including SMPTE, IEEE, VSF, AES, EBU, IRT, NAB, and PBS. Over his career, he has developed and taught technology courses at several colleges.

Matthew Cowan, CTO at Entertainment Technology Canada Ltd.

Matthew Cowan specializes in matching human perception with design requirements for visual capture and display systems. His early career focused on developing high-performance display systems, where he pursued, in engineering terms, how to give a film look to a digitally projected image. As a principal with Entertainment Technology Consultants, he has brought this knowledge of image color and dynamics to cinema technology leaders such as Texas Instruments, IMAX, Christie Digital, and Kodak. Cowan has tackled the problem of developing a practical 3D system for digital theaters, resulting in RealD's solution. Cowan's current work is looking at the next generation of cinema performance, with extended color, brightness, and dynamic range. He has 18 issued and 25 patents pending in the area of image processing and 3D systems. He has chaired numerous standards committees in the field of digital cinema, 3D, and laser illumination, and is a regular speaker at industry conferences.

Ian Fletcher, CTO at Grass Valley, a Belden Brand

Ian Fletcher's career began at the BBC, where he worked as a sound engineer before setting up his video production company. Fletcher grew increasingly interested in the potential of new low-cost microcomputers to bring innovative solutions to the broadcast industry. He formed OmniBus Systems, where as chief technology officer, Fletcher spearheaded many of the technological revolutions in the broadcast industry, including the transition from tape- to server-based systems, news automation, large-scale multichannel automation, and the groundbreaking, software-based playout system, iTX. Over the years, Fletcher has received many industry accolades, including the coveted Queen's Award for Innovation. Following Omnibus' acquisition by Miranda Technologies and Miranda's subsequent acquisition by Belden and merger with Grass Valley, Fletcher has continued to drive the development of software systems, particularly in the emerging areas of cloud playout and virtualization. He holds two patents for video image identification and cloud-based p

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