Amsterdam – September 7, 2012 – IBC booth 8.B80 – Fraunhofer IIS, the world’s renowned source for audio and multimedia technologies, at IBC shows a complete real-time DVB-T2 live broadcasting chain with the MPEG audio codec HE-AAC for 5.1 surround audio signal transmission. HE-AAC is today globally established in TV and radio broadcasting because of its efficiency, high audio quality, and convenient availability in major broadcasting devices from professional audio encoders to TV sets and set-top boxes.

The broadcasting chain consists of all necessary elements to bring high-quality multi-channel content to the end user’s TV set over DVB-T2 terrestrial TV, including encoder, multiplexer, and modulator on the transmission side, as well as set-top box, and TV set on the reception side. Thomson Video Networks and Rohde & Schwarz have provided equipment for this demo, which are the Thomson’s ViBE EM4000 Multichannel ­Encoder and the Thomson’s NetProcessor 9030 / 40 Multiplexer and the Rohde & Schwarz SFC Compact Modulator. All the devices shown in the broadcasting chain are available on the market today and support HE-AAC.

HE-AAC is the most efficient audio codec available for TV broadcasting today. With a bit-rate of only 160kbit/s for high-quality 5.1 surround sound and freedom of choice of the channel configuration from mono to stereo to 5.1 surround, up to 48 channels, HE-AAC is unmatched in efficiency, flexibility and quality. As a consequence, HE-AAC is the mandatory audio codec in most countries, which recently introduced the second generation of terrestrial TV, for example, UK and Sweden. And it is the mandatory audio codec for HbbTV.

Show attendees can see other HE-AAC related presentations at the Fraunhofer’s IBC booth 8.B80, including Dialogue Enhancement for improved speech intelligibility in radio and TV as well as HE-AAC multi-channel playback on Android 4.1.

For more information, visit www.iis.fraunhofer.de/audio