NTT Electronics' AVC/H.264 Encoders/Decoders Used for Austria's HDTV Launch
September 3, 2008

NTT Electronics Supported to Realize ORF's First HD Sports Coverage

NTT Electronics Corporation (hereafter, NTT Electronics, Hiroshi Yoshimura, President, headquartered in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward) is pleased to announce that its award-winning AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV encoders/decoders HV9100 Series were selected by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF, or the Oesterreichischer Rundfunk) for their first HD sports coverage.

In June 2008, the ORF has broadcast EURO 2008, the UEFA European Football Championships, in high definition using the latest in encoding and decoding technology from NTT Electronics. The device used was the HV9100 Series AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV encoders/decoders. This allowed the ORF to offer real-time HD transmissions through high-quality ATM network of Telecom Austria, the largest telecom company in the country. As the HV9100 Series supports AVC/H.264 High 4:2:2 Profile (8bit) (*1), high bitrate (55Mbps) HD live broadcast is offered with superb video quality.

Mr. Hetfleisch, a technical manager at ORF, had this to say: 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.

The HV9100 Series, used for this year's UEFA European Football Championships, was the world's first to offer AVC/H.264 High 4:2:2 Profile support, which allows broadcasts of sports with intense action levels to be shown in high video quality with low latency. 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 also used by many broadcasters and carriers for live coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

NTT Electronics' HV9100 series will be on display in Amsterdam from September 12th - 16th at IBC 2008, Europe's largest broadcasting technology event (Booth No.1-B18).

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AVC/H.264 HDTV/SDTV encoder HVE9100

Terminology

*1: AVC/H.264 High 4:2:2 Profile
Within AVC/H.264, there are seven defined feature sets, or profiles, to enable support for various resolution needs. The High 4:2:2 Profile offers not only 4:2:0 and 4:0:0 color spaces, but also enables the use of the 4:2:2 color space. The 4:2:2 format has twice the amount of chroma data as the more commonly used 4:2:0 format, making it suitable for broadcast and professional video uses.

About ORF

The Oesterreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) is Austria's largest media enterprise. The ORF broadcasts two 24-hour television programmes, three nation-wide radio programmes and nine regional radio programmes from the provincial studios. In addition there are ORFTeletext and ORF ON services. More information about ORF is available at www.orf.at.

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