Thomson Video Networks

Last updated
Thomson Video Networks
Private
IndustryICT - Broadcast and Media
Headquarters Rennes, France
ProductsVideo encoding and transcoding, contribution codec, video streaming, stream processing, video servers, QoS & network management system
Number of employees
400 (approx)
Website www.thomson-networks.com

Thomson Video Networks is a technology broadcast company that provides video compression, transcoding and processing solutions[ buzzword ] for media companies, video service providers, and TV broadcasters. The firm has offices in 16 countries and headquarters in Rennes, France.

Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for movie data files, audio files, or character encoding. This is usually done in cases where a target device does not support the format or has limited storage capacity that mandates a reduced file size, or to convert incompatible or obsolete data to a better-supported or modern format.

Rennes Prefecture and commune in Brittany, France

Rennes is a city in the east of Brittany in northwestern France at the confluence of the Ille and the Vilaine. Rennes is the capital of the region of Brittany, as well as the Ille-et-Vilaine department.

Contents

History

The company has been established in the video delivery domain since the late 1980s when the Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) was created with the purpose of deriving a standard for the coding of moving pictures and audio. As a video headend division of the French electronics Thomson group, now known as Technicolor SA, the company developed and manufactured MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/AVC video encoding and networking equipment based on advanced compression algorithms. Since 2011, the division has become an independent private held company with a financial structure backed by the public/private Venture Capital, FCDE. [1] [2]

Technicolor SA French multinational corporation that provides services and products for the communication, media and entertainment industries

Technicolor SA, formerly Thomson SARL and Thomson Multimedia, is a French multinational corporation that provides services and products for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Technicolor's headquarters are located in Paris, France. Other main office locations include Rennes (France), Los Angeles, Edegem (Belgium), London, Bangalore, Chennai (India) and Lawrenceville, Georgia (USA). Former US headquarters of Thomson Consumer Electronics in Carmel, Indiana (USA) was closed in 2017.

Its products include High Definition (HD) / Standard Definition (SD) broadcast and multi-screen video encoding, decoding, transcoding, multiplexing, redundancy and network management, as well as video stream server for contribution, terrestrial, satellite, cable, IPTV, and OTT services.

The firm participates in the development and definition of the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) compression standard. [3] The HEVC standard aims at obtaining a bit-rate reduction of up to 50 percent compared to the current H.264 compression format, and paves the way for broadcasting in the Ultra high definition television (Ultra HD) picture format. [4] The firm is a member of broadcasting associations such as ATSC, MPEG-DASH Industry Forum, DVB, IABM, MPEG, OMA, SCTE, SMPTE, as well as a founding member of the French Research Institute B-Com. [5]

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard, designed as a successor to the widely used AVC. In comparison to AVC, HEVC offers from 25% to 50% better data compression at the same level of video quality, or substantially improved video quality at the same bit rate. It supports resolutions up to 8192×4320, including 8K UHD, and unlike the primarily 8-bit AVC, HEVC's higher fidelity Main10 profile has been incorporated into nearly all supporting hardware. HEVC is competing with the royalty-free AV1 coding format for standardization by the video standard working group NetVC of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Digital Video Broadcasting open standard for digital television broadcasting

Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) and European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The International Trade Association for broadcast & media technology (IABM) is a non-profit trade organization, formerly known as International Association of Broadcasting Manufacturers, is the International Association for Broadcast & Media Technology Suppliers whose members represent over 80% of the broadcast and entertainment technology market’s revenues. IABM facilitates the important networking and interaction between suppliers that shape and define the unique ecosystem of the broadcast and media technology industry.

As of March 2016 Thomson Video Networks has been acquired by Harmonic Inc.. [6]

Harmonic Inc. is an American technology company that develops and markets video routing, server, and storage products for companies that produce, process, and distribute video content for television and the Internet.

Products

Related Research Articles

In signal processing, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction involves encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Compression can be either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information.

A video codec is an electronic circuit or software that compresses or decompresses digital video. It converts uncompressed video to a compressed format or vice versa. In the context of video compression, "codec" is a concatenation of "encoder" and "decoder"—a device that only compresses is typically called an encoder, and one that only decompresses is a decoder.

Advanced Video Coding, also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, Advanced Video Coding, is a block-oriented motion-compensation-based video compression standard. As of 2014, it is one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of video content. It supports resolutions up to 8192×4320, including 8K UHD.

DVB-T is an abbreviation for "Digital Video Broadcasting — Terrestrial"; it is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in the UK in 1998. This system transmits compressed digital audio, digital video and other data in an MPEG transport stream, using coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing modulation. It is also the format widely used worldwide for Electronic News Gathering for transmission of video and audio from a mobile newsgathering vehicle to a central receive point.

H.262 or MPEG-2 Part 2 is a video coding format standardised and jointly maintained by ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG), and developed with a number of companies, primarily Sony, Thomson and Mitsubishi Electric. It is the second part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-2 standard. The ITU-T Recommendation H.262 and ISO/IEC 13818-2 documents are identical.

ATEME is a French broadcast equipment company specialized in video compression H.265 / HEVC; MPEG4; MPEG2 encoding / decoding solutions for contribution links, distribution, multi-screen live streaming, OTT and VOD applications. The company founded in 1991 is headquartered in Vélizy near Paris, France, and has offices in the US, China (Beijing) and Korea (Seoul). The company has a worldwide resellers network and operates globally with clients in more than 60 countries.

1080p set of HDTV high-definition video

1080p is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the screen vertically; the p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The term usually assumes a widescreen aspect ratio of 16:9, implying a resolution of 2.1 megapixels. It is often marketed as full HD, to contrast 1080p with 720p resolution screens.

Quarter-pixel motion(also known as Q-pel motion or Qpel motion) refers to using a quarter of the distance between pixels as the motion vector precision for motion estimation and motion compensation in video compression schemes. It is used in many modern video coding formats such as MPEG-4 ASP, H.264/AVC, and HEVC. Though higher precision motion vectors take more bits to encode, they can sometimes result in more efficient compression overall, by increasing the quality of the prediction signal.

Rate-distortion optimization (RDO) is a method of improving video quality in video compression. The name refers to the optimization of the amount of distortion against the amount of data required to encode the video, the rate. While it is primarily used by video encoders, rate-distortion optimization can be used to improve quality in any encoding situation where decisions have to be made that affect both file size and quality simultaneously.

AVC-Intra is a type of video coding developed by Panasonic, and then supported in products made by other companies. AVC-Intra is available in Panasonic's high definition broadcast products, such as, for example, their P2 card equipped broadcast cameras.

Chips&Media

Chips&Media, Inc., is a provider of intellectual property for integrated circuits such as system on a chip technology for encoding and decoding video, and Image Processing. Headquartered in Seoul, Korea.

x265 HEVC/H.265 encoder

x265 is a library for encoding video into the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) video compression format that was developed and standardized by the ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG. x265 is offered under either version 2 of the GNU General Public License (GPL) or a commercial license, similar to the x264 project.

A video coding format is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital video content. Examples of video coding formats include H.262, MPEG-4 Part 2, H.264, HEVC (H.265), Theora, RealVideo RV40, VP9, and AV1. A specific software or hardware implementation capable of video compression and/or decompression to/from a specific video coding format is called a video codec; an example of a video codec is Xvid, which is one of several different codecs which implements encoding and decoding videos in the MPEG-4 Part 2 video coding format in software.

High Efficiency Video Coding implementations and products covers the implementations and products of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).

Ultra-high-definition television Television formats beyond HDTV, 4K and 8KUHD

Ultra-high-definition television today includes 4K UHD and 8K UHD, which are two digital video formats with an aspect ratio of 16:9. These were first proposed by NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories and later defined and approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

References

  1. ↑ "Technicolor Sells Off Thomson Video Networks". 9 March 2011.
  2. ↑ "FCDE To Acquire Thomson Video Networks". 9 March 2011.
  3. ↑ "Thomson Video Networks unveils HEVC support for ViBE VS7000". 26 August 2013.
  4. ↑ "Thomson Video Networks touts HEVC ultra HD trial". 6 September 2013.
  5. ↑ "Thomson Video Networks, une ETI chez B-Com". March 2013.
  6. ↑ "Harmonic Completes Acquisition of Thomson Video Networks". March 2016.
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