French Tennis Open Visitors are Offered a Look at the Future of Broadcast Television
WASHINGTON, June 10, 2013 — The Cable Show,Booth #600 — ATEME, a global leader in advanced video compression solutions for the broadcast industry, announced today that its digital compression technology was chosen by the French Tennis Federation (FFT) and France Televisions, the official broadcaster and executive producer of the French Tennis Open, to inaugurate the new “Ultra High Definition” television format during the 2013 event.
Ultra High Definition, also called “4K”, delivers an image four times superior to the current high definition TV.
The “tennis world’s first” application of this innovative technology took place again during the second week of the French Open, with the live multi-camera capture of the competition on the Philippe Chatrier court, as was the case seven years ago for High Definition.
This major step for live television production was visible in a showroom of France Televisions’ RG LAB. Visitors were able to experience the quality of 4K images in either live viewing or replay.
FFT and France Televisions joined forces with AMP VISUAL TV for image capture, ATEME for the digital compression of the signal and EUTELSAT for satellite broadcasting for this project.
Additionally, another world premiere presentation at the French Open included a live experimental end-to-end delivery chain for High Definition HEVC. This trial, conducted by the 4EVER consortium that includes Orange and ATEME, used the new codec also known as H.265 to encode, stream over the Orange fiber network, broadcast over the air using DVB-T2, decode and display the live competition on PC, TV and tablet.
Bernard Fontaine, innovation tech director, France Televisions Digital Editions, said:
“We are very proud to once again be at the forefront of the latest technological developments in television. Through the dedicated efforts of our partners, we were able to successfully provide visitors with a look at the future of broadcast television during one of the largest tennis events in the world.”
Michel Artieres, founder, president and CEO, ATEME said:
“ATEME is honored to be a contributor in the innovation that was showcased at this major event. This is a great example of how the combined efforts of dedicated professionals can result in driving innovation in the broadcast industry.”
About ATEME:
ATEME is a world leading provider of HEVC / H.265, MPEG-4 / H.264 and MPEG-2 bandwidth efficient compression technology. ATEME encoding solutions are deployed widely for broadcast contribution links, distribution, multi-screen live streaming, OTT and VOD applications. More information is available at www.ateme.com.