Ericsson Awarded Third Emmy in Digital TV

Ericsson will be awarded one of the highest honors from the television industry, an Emmy Award, for its Active Format Description technology that allows legacy analog narrow screen (4:3) sets to receive an image that is sized correctly to meet the original intent of the program producer, even when the original image was photographed in a wide screen format (16:9).

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences says it will formally present the award at a ceremony during the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Jan. 2012, where Ericsson President and CEO Hans Vestberg will deliver a keynote address.

The Active Format Description technologies and systems were created in anticipation of the need for cable operators to provide analog narrow screen TV services in parallel with the wide screen HDTV digital service in the United States

“Ericsson and seven other companies are receiving the award in recognition of their pioneering development and implementation of the Active Format Description (AFD) technology within many of their products,” said Robert Seidel, chairman of the engineering and technology committee of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, “as well as their evangelizing efforts to drive the industry toward an end-to-end system for AFD, thus enabling tens of millions of U.S. households with legacy analog TVs to see the images intended by the program producer.

This is the third Emmy award that Ericsson has received. In 2007, the OpenStream Digital Services Platform was recognized for its pivotal role in driving the growth of video-on-demand (VOD) television services. In 2008, the company’s video compression group was commended for its pioneering development and deployment of MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) systems for high definition television (HDTV).

“Without this technology, 70 million U.S. homes that only have analog TV may only see limited sections of the picture and not the original image intended by the producer,” said Per Borgklint, senior vice president and head of business unit multimedia at Ericsson. “We are immensely proud that the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has recognized our efforts in this area. This award shows our commitment to enable the progression of digital television around the world.”

Launched in 1948, the Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards honor development and innovation in broadcast technology and recognize companies, organizations and individuals for breakthroughs in technology that have a significant effect on television engineering. A blue ribbon panel of industry professionals reviews and recommends technologies and potential awardees.