ATSC’S RICHER ELECTED FIRST FoBTV CHAIRMAN

Posted on May 1, 2012 in ATSC News

The Management Committee of the Future of Broadcast Television (FoBTV) Initiative, which was officially formed during the NAB Show, announced its leadership team.

ATSC President Mark Richer was elected the first FoBTV Chairman.  Richer is one of the chief architects of FoBTV and the ATSC is one of the 13 global technology and standards organizations that founded the FoBTV Initiative.  Phil Laven, Chairman of the Digital Video Broadcasting Project, was named FoBTV Vice Chairman.

Founding FOBTV members comprise the Management Committee:

• Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC)
• Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC)
• Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC)
• Digital Video Broadcasting Project (DVB)
• European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
• Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)
• Globo TV-Brazil
• IEEE Broadcast Technology Society (IEEE-BTS)
• National Association of Broadcasters (NAB)
• National Engineering Research Center of Digital TV of China (NERC-DTV)
• NHK Science and Technology Research Laboratories (NHK)
• Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
• Brazilian Society of Television Engineers (SET)

The first Chairman of the newly formed FoBTV Technical Committee is Dr. Wenjun Zhang, Chief Scientist, NERC-DTV. Three Vice Chairs were named: Dr. Yiyan Wu, CRC’s Principal Research Scientist, Dr. Toru Kuroda, Director of NHK’s Planning and Coordination Division and Dr. Namho Hur, General Director, Department of Broadcasting System Research at ETRI.

Together, they will lead the FoBTV Technical Committee’s solicitation and evaluation of technical proposals and recommendation of major technologies to be used as the basis for new standards.

FoBTV is a voluntary, non-profit association that is open to any organization that signs the MOU, which underscores the goals of the FOBTV Initiative. They include developing future ecosystem models for terrestrial broadcasting taking into account business, regulatory and technical environments; developing requirements for next generation terrestrial broadcast systems; fostering collaboration of digital TV development laboratories; recommending major technologies to be used as the basis for new standards; and requesting standardization of selected technologies (layers) by appropriate standards development organizations.

Posted in ATSC News