Four Emmy Awards for Research Activities at Fraunhofer HHI

Scientists on the red carpet: four Emmys have already gone to projects in which Fraunhofer HHI was significantly involved. The first award was presented for the video coding standard H.264 MPEG-4 AVC in 2008. The Emmy of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is considered one of the most important US television awards.

The Emmy success story begins in 2008: The Joint Video Team (JVT) is honored for the development of the video coding standard H.264 MPEG-4 AVC. The prize in the category Technology is accepted by Fraunhofer HHI scientist Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Wiegand, who heads the JVT alongside Gary Sullivan and Ajay Luthra. The award-winning technology is also responsible for the success of applications such as Blu-ray Disc, Internet TV or HDTV, because H.264 requires only half as many bits for a video as previous standards. The researchers are rewarded twice for their development: in 2009 there will be a second Emmy for the JVT.

In 2014, Fraunhofer HHI can be pleased with another award: The prize goes to the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), in which the Institute is participating. The prize is awarded for the development of the "MPEG-2 Transport Stream" standard. Dr. Thomas Schierl accepts the award. The Fraunhofer HHI researcher and his team have been working on the integration of current video codecs since 2007. Nearly all digital receivers today are equipped with the "MPEG-2 transport stream" format for video reception. Fraunhofer HHI played a major role in the standardization of the format.

In 2017, the institute celebrates a fourth Emmy. Together with Huawei, MediaTek, Nokia, Qualcomm Incorporated, Samsung and Sony Corp., Fraunhofer HHI is part of the Joint Collaborative Team for Video Coding (JCT-VC) that has driven the development of the HEVC standard. The technology enables videos to be transmitted efficiently in ultra high definition. For this, JCT-VC is rewarded with the Primetime Emmy Engineering Award.