Winter 2003 STRL Bulletin

NHK Science and Technical Research Laboratories ISSN 1345-4099 ABU General Assembly 2002 in no. 13 CONTENTS he 39th ABU General Assembly and associated meeting were held from October 31 to November 8 in Tokyo. It was the first ABU General Assembly to Tbe held in in eight years. The meeting was hosted by NHK, and more than 400 representatives took part in it. Top News At the beginning of the Engineering Committee ABU General Assembly 2002 in Tokyo meeting, Dr. Takehiko Yoshino, NHK's Executive ...... 1 Director-General of Engineering, gave a welcome address on behalf of the host broadcaster. News He said that this year's ABU Engineering Broadcasting Technologies in the 21st Committee would provide a firm basis for a more Century ...... 2 productive partnership among the broadcasters of Basic Concept and Technologies the region, especially in the field of technological ABU Engineering Committee Underlying Content Production in development. the Multimedia Era ...... 3 During this ABU General Assembly, NHK stressed the progress of HDTV ABU Delegates Visit STRL ...... 4 broadcasting. The special topic, "HDTV from End to End," gave three NHK engineers a chance to tell the Engineering Committee (November 1) about HDTV. Additionally, NHK Learning Fair 2002 ...... 5 HDTV programs and equipment such as advanced HDTV cameras on board space shuttle flights, 3D-HDTV, and HDTV/PAL standards converter were demonstrated in Feature the lobby. A Study on Multilingualization of NHK STRL gave two presentations in the Engineering Committee on November 3. Multimedia Data Broadcasting Dr. Sei Miyake, Director-General of NHK STRL, gave the keynote speech, "Broadcasting Services ...... 8 Technologies in the 21st Century". Mr. Shigeru Shimoda, Director of Multimedia Services, followed with a speech on content production technologies, of which NHK STRL has been engaged in very active research and development. Lecture NHK STRL also contributed their research results to the Engineering Committee. Technologies and Services on Digital Dr. Haruo Okuda, Executive Research Engineer of NHK STRL, who is also a chairman Broadcasting (7): Error Correction of the "Transmission Topic Area" within the Engineering Committee, presented a Methods ...... 14 status report on ABU activities in this field. It included the latest research results of NHK STRL, e.g., on digital television broadcasting systems, broadcasting systems About us based on Home Servers, APIs for multimedia digital broadcasting, and ITS Overview of Laboratories ...... 12 broadcasting systems. ABU delegates were also invited to tour NHK. Topics / R & D / Products / One tour was to the NHK Learning Fair 2002, held Researcher / From Divisions / at the NHK Broadcasting Center in . Here, Invention / Treatise / NHK Technology all the delegates could enjoy demonstrations of kid's programs produced with technology developed by STRL (see page 5 for details). The other tour was of the new NHK STRL building. One hundred forty Technical Tour at NHK STRL ABU delegates visited NHK STRL on November 4th and 8th. Eight exhibits were on display (see page 4 for details). Most delegates were very impressed by the state-of-the- art technology being developed at STRL. At the end of the Engineering Committee meeting, Dr. Kazuyoshi Shogen, NHK's Senior Associate Director of Planning, was nominated as the new Vice-Chairman of the Engineering Committee. The next ABU General Assembly will be held in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2003. STRL

Broadcast Technology no.13, Winter 2003 C NHK STRL 1