Rapid TV News

This Rapid TV News' Round Table focuses on signal Compression and Distribution. Digital television, at least for most of the world, has given us MPEG2 compression. Now the world is rapidly moving towards MPEG4, or H.264 compression, which manages to further squeeze a TV signal and to make transmissions of High Definition TV a more affordable prospect for broadcasters.

But MPEG4 is not alone. Other video codecs exist. Not least the JPEG 2000 compression system which is based on wavelet compression and claimed to be ideal for use in TV production. Indeed, new developments like the powerful DIRAC wavelet system might well be vital if broadcasters are ever to embrace Super High-Definition transmissions at 4K and even 8K in the future. There is also the VC-1, VC-2 and similar codecs being used for web-based transmission.

These, along with IPTV transmission, plus the pressure from broadcasters to adopt 1080p transmissions at 50 or 60 Hz frame rates, all mean that compression remains a very hot topic for the TV world.

This expert panel discusses where we are today, and how production studios and broadcasters are tackling the different options open to them in terms of delivering and distributing signals to a myriad of devices - and what the future probably holds in store.