JPEG-2000 continues to be adopted for European sport transport

The T-VIPS stand at IBC is the place to be if you want to learn about the use of JPEG2000 in the broadcast sports environment. But this year the company has added an extra wrinkle as it has embraced the use of MPEG-4.

Janne Morstøl, COO of T-VIPS

“On the contribution side JPEG2000 has been selected in Europe and when building a new infrastructure networks go IP and JPEG2000,” says Janne T. Morstøl, COO, T-VIPS. “But there are still legacy networks and operations that have limited bit rates so we are complimenting our offering with MPEG4 this year.”

The family consists of the TNS544 TSoIP Switch, a member of the T-VIPS nSure portfolio, the TVG650, an MPEG-4 contribution encoder and the TVG610, an MPEG-4 contribution decoder.

“With the newly launched MPEG contribution encoder and decoder joining our existing JPEG2000 solutions in the Video Gateway range, our customers can now choose a high-quality T-VIPS contribution solution no matter what type of contribution link they are using,” adds Morstøl.

The company is also becoming more involved with DVB-T2 Lite delivery. Here at IBC T-VIPS is partnering with ProTelevision, a supplier of the modulators, repeaters and transceivers, to demonstrate DVB T2 in action. The companies also will power a trial for the Danish operator, Open Channel, which will go live post-IBC. The solution has been designed to enable operators to deploy DVB-T2-Lite for the distribution of video and audio content to mobile devices.  The 1.7 MHz trial will include a large number of radio services.
“It’s important that DVB-T2-Lite is a subset of the DVB-T2 standard as it means that flexible DVB-T2 solutions such as the T-VIPS CP560 DVB-T2 Gateway and the ProTelevision DVB-T2 modulator can be upgraded for the deployment of DVB-T2-Lite, minimizing the cost of launching new mobile content services,” says Morstøl, COO, T-VIPS.
DVB-T2-Lite was ratified by the DVB in July 2011. As a profile optimized for the distribution of video and radio content to mobile devices, it is better suited for viewing video and listening to radio on mobile devices as it is more robust, it requires less transmitter power and it maximizes the device battery life.

The push to mobile is strong but Morstøl says broadcasters are also looking to make sure they are ready for next-generation services based around 3 Gigabit signals and those could include 1080p or 3D.

Recently the T-VIPS TVG450 JPEG2000 Gateway was deployed by Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and Korean Broadcast System (KBS) for transport of 3D video from the IAAF World Athletic Championships at Daegu Stadium to the KBS media centre.

Designed for real-time contribution and distribution of broadcast quality video over IP networks, the TVG450 enables transmission of compressed HD, SD and 3D television over Gigabit Ethernet and provides increased density, with up to 1 3G-SDI, 2 HD-SDI or 4 SDI channels in each unit. The Gateway is ideal for the transport of 3D video footage, effortlessly providing the left/right eye synchronisation that can be such a problem for other solutions. The TVG450 takes advantage of the unmatched quality of JPEG2000 compression, combined with the inherent flexibility of IP to offer broadcasters an efficient, affordable and scalable solution for studio quality high definition video contribution. The TVG450 is compact, cost-effective, supports lossless and visually lossless compression and has user-friendly configuration and control.

“Sport has always led product development,” says Morstøl of the role the industry plays in advancing technology.