The HD technology event you’ve been waiting for takes place May 17-18 at the BFI Imax theatre in London — two of the premier societies supporting the broadcasting industry, BKSTS and SMPTE, have joined forces with TVBEurope to present a conference, www.hdmastersconference.com, on the subject of high definition television, writes Fergal Ringrose.
This is the event that deals with the ‘how’ and not the ‘why’ of HD. How do you build an HD facility and exactly what kind of technical problems are you going to face — in acquisition, production, post production, distribution and delivery?
The conference is aimed at a pan-European audience. The typical delegate will be a senior manager within a broadcasting organisation, almost certainly with many years of experience in television. He/she will have responsibility for implanting technical change within their organisation. It is likely that the organisation has already laid out broad plans for a move to HD — but are the technical details of that move fully understood? Really?
Alongside our technology panel sessions we’ll also have user case studies from those who’ve already learned the hard lessons first-hand — people like Chris Johns, Chief Engineer, Broadcast Strategy at BSkyB; Dave Mazza, Senior Vice President Engineering, NBC Olympics; Dr Bertold Heil from T-Systems on its HD infrastructure for the World Cup; and a special session with Simon Fell, Controller Emerging Technologies ITV on the London DTT HD trial.
Topics to be discussed include: Will we see a single transmission standard and what will it be? Can a broadcaster adopt a ‘format agnostic’ approach? What extra demands does HD put on sets, lighting and make-up? How do you move 1.5Gb signals around your 270Mb facility? Will there be any bits left to watch if you continually compress and decompress? How to transport HD content around the world electronically; Having produced in surround sound, how do you move the signal around? Is it practical or wise to abandon the QC procedures developed for SD? Do higher bit rates mean lower tolerances for errors? What difference do HD lenses make?
ยป Register now: www.hdmastersconference.com
