With the growing interest in stereoscopic 3D television, Grass Valley™ is using its leadership in video compression and content processing technologies to offer transport solutions for both backhaul (contribution link) and delivery to the home. These integrated dual-channel solutions, which the company will unveil at NAB 2010, guarantee perfect temporal synchronization and image matching, preserving the stereoscopic 3D effect from the location to the home.

As with any new technology, sports is likely to be a major driver for stereoscopic 3D television, thus there is a need for high reliability and quality contribution link to backhaul the content from the stadium to the broadcast center. The new Grass Valley ViBE VA5004 contribution encoder with its 3 Gb/s input capabilities simultaneously accepts both left and right views, and uses JPEG 2000 to achieve the highest possible quality and compression efficiency. By linking the compression engines, processing is matched across the two channels, and of course synchronization is ensured with minimum compression latency.

To deliver stereoscopic 3D to the home, Grass Valley is using NAB 2010 to launch a new version of its ViBE encoder family. The ViBE EM3000 MPEG-4 HD encoder is set up to encode the “side-by-side” stereoscopic signal preferred by some pioneering broadcasters to deliver 3D via a standard set-top box. Grass Valley is working with Sensio Technologies, a leading expert in the field of 3D video, to optimize the H.264 algorithms to ensure premium quality is maintained to the home.

The ViBE EM3000 HD encoder has already been used in a number of trial 3D broadcasts.

“We are very much in the experimental phase for stereoscopic 3D television broadcasting, and it is really important that these trials and early launches can use existing, proven technology to minimize the capital outlay,” said Christophe Delahousse, Senior Vice President of Headend and Transmissions business units within Grass Valley. “Because of our technical and market leadership in compression and digital video processing, we have been able to respond quickly to new demands with solutions which are based on proven and very popular products, which guarantee image quality and best use of bandwidth.”

The ViBE VA5004 and the ViBE EM3000 can both be seen as part of a complete stereoscopic 3D demonstration on the Grass Valley booth at 2010 NAB, SL106 in the lower south hall.

www.grassvalley.com