Canuck company takes technical Emmy

As far as the general population is concerned, the Emmy Awards generally fête TV stars for various roles and in various genres – drama, comedy, mini-series, et cetera. But beneath the red-carpeted sheen, a Canadian technology firm is taking top honours for its pioneering work in HDTV. Gennum Corp., a Burlington ON semiconductor company, was recently named winner of the Technical Emmy Award for its HDTV achievements. "It’s quite an honour," said David Lynch, senior VP and GM of Gennum’s video products group. "Normally companies like Sony, Panasonic or the BBC win these awards. As far as I know there’s no other semiconductor vendor that has won a Technical Emmy." Gennum won for its Serial Digital Interface (SDI) technology – a data protocol that is becoming a necessary part of the increasingly HD video broadcasting world. Based on a technical standard devised by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), SDI chipsets in video equipment – cameras, workstations, production switchers – facilitate real-time transfers of the massive amounts of data spawned by HD productions. According to Lynch, Gennum was among the first semiconductor companies to implement the SMPTE’s various SDI iterations operating at 270 Mbps, 1.5 Gbps and 3 Gbps. "Other companies had board and module solutions that were quite expensive," Lynch said, recalling Gennum’s SDI beginnings in the 1990s. "We were the first to come out with components that did the equalization, and the clock and data recovery in component forms that were practical to roll out in volume." Lynch said Gennum’s work on SDI helped the broadcast industry in Japan switch from standard definition to HD. "In fact, we won an award in Japan from the Canadian Embassy because we were viewed as being instrumental in that country’s HDTV rollout starting in 2002. If they hadn’t had efficient component solutions, they wouldn’t have had their broadcast rollout on the schedule the government had put together." Japan is on track for full HD by the end of 2006. But the road to Emmy stardom wasn’t smooth. Gennum had to ride the highs and lows of the world’s HD rollout, which seems to occur in waves. "In the United States, they started the rollout of DTV but it stalled for a variety of reasons," Lynch said. "The TVs weren’t really ready, and the bubble burst. It’s only in the last couple of years that the DTV rollout has started to take place. They had to move their switch-over date from 2006 to 2009." As the US floundered, Japan surged forward, and Gennum rode that wave. Now that Japan is leveling off, the US market is finally taking flight. "A lot of our growth in the last couple of years has been driven by the US," Lynch said. "And Europe…is starting to ramp up and convert their digital infrastructure to HD." In Gennum’s estimation, Canada’s HD/DTV transformation is respectable, but off the US pace. "Canada led a lot of ways in terms of digital infrastructure because of the CBC, an early adopter of digital," Lynch said. "They’re also adopting HD technology – although our rollout for DTV lags the US a bit. I think we’re two or three years behind, in terms of terrestrial broadcasts." Despite Canada’s tardiness, Lynch noted that the country is a hotbed of HDTV know-how. "I think we have wonderful talent in Canada. Certainly in video, Toronto has some of the strongest talent in the world, building around the CBC and other organizations that work here. A lot of our talent ends up being key talent in US companies as well." Gennum has its collective eye on other HDTV innovations. In September the company announced the world’s first SDI chipset to meet SMPTE 424M, the specification for 3 Gbps SDI. "We’re also working on helping video perform better over data networks," Lynch said. "And we have some low-power wireless stuff we think will really excite people."

Canuck company takes technical Emmy

Broadcast | December 6, 2006

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