omson Video Networks Participates In the New "Ultra" Research & Development Project: At the Heart of Ultra HD Future

Thomson Video Networks Participates In The New "Ultra" Research & Development Project: At The Heart of Ultra HD Future

RENNES, France - Oct. 23, 2013 - The French competitiveness cluster, Images & R seaux, has launched a collaborative Research & Development project named Ultra , with its ImaginLab experimentation platform and a DVB-T2 network powered by the French broadcaster, TDF. This new project brings together a dozen players from the ICT sector, including Thomson Video Networks. This collaborative project enables the transmission and reception of Ultra HD content, as well as the development of new consumers usages. The partners[1] are working together on the future of digital television all along the video chain, from encoding and real time transcoding to decoding, including transport and broadcasting. Such initiatives are also expected by the French authorities, such as the CSA[2], DGCIS[3] and CGEIET[4] to determine the Digital Terrestrial TV for the 2015-2020 period.

From Demonstration to Commercial Solutions

After a successful first trial on users perception during the event La Traviata , the objective of the French cluster Images & R seaux and its partners is to demonstrate the Ultra project is a state of the art for the transmission and reception of this new type of content. The Ultra project will focus on two main demonstrations:

The first one is based on Ultra HD[5] sequences, with a quality that fits with the limits of the technical specification of the first UHDTV TV sets currently available on the retail market.

The second is based on the transmission of an HD channel in HEVC[6] (real time transcoding of a French DTTV program).

The primary goal of the consortium is to demonstrate such solutions in an environment which is close to an operational network, in order to highlight the strategic positioning of the partners on this emerging worldwide market. Indeed, first commercial Ultra HD channels are expected for 2015.

The ImaginLab platform and its DVB-T2 network make such demonstrations possible: it is one of the very rare innovation platforms in France and Europe that provides the requested environment and know-how to insert new workflows in real broadcasting said Michel Corriou, ImaginLab Project Manager.

The Ultra project takes the best of the contributions of other collaborative projects labelled by Images & R seaux, especially the Eureka/Celtic+ H2B2VS project, the FUI[7]-13 Austral and the 4EVER projects and the FUI-14 OptiSaT2 project.

The system demonstrations will take place during the Loading the Future 2013 awards ceremony organized by Images & R seaux on November 14, 2013, at the ESC Business School, in Rennes (France). The event will go on with a workshop including keynotes on these new challenges for Digital TeleVision.

What's new for the end-user?

The new Ultra HD format aims to improve user experience with a better video quality. The picture resolution is quad HD and raises user immersion into to a life-like level with realistic details and true colours.

About HEVC new compression standard adoption, it is one of the pre-requisites to commercial Ultra HD channels' deployment and, thanks to a dramatically reduced requested bandwidth, it is also meant to optimize current HD programs transmission on various existing and future networks.

[1] Enensys, Envivio, INSA/IETR, Orange, TDF, Technicolor, Teamcast, Telecom Bretagne, Telecom Paristech, Thomson Video Networks

[2] Conseil sup rieur de laudiovisuel

[3] Direction g n rale de la comp titivit , de lindustrie et des services

[4] Conseil g n ral de l conomie, de lindustrie, de l nergie et des technologies

[5] 4K and UHD acronyms are also commonly used

[6] HEVC (High Efficiency Video Codec) or H265 is the new video codec which has been approved in January 2013.. HEVC is the successor to MPEG-4/H.264.

[7] FUI: Single Interministerial Fund which provides support for cluster policy and for the forward-looking investments that are part of Frances National Loan Programme

LINK:	https://www.thomson-networks.com/en/news/thomson-video-networks-partic...
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