Mobile television, high-resolution TV, films on DVD, videos on cell phones – all this is only possible thanks to video compression. The compression standard ITU-T Recommendation H.264 / ISO/IEC 14496-10 AVC, or H.264 for short, is particularly efficient. It reduces the data rate required for transmitting a video by more than half without compromising quality.

The standard’s developers were officially presented with the Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award 2009 by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The prize was received by the leaders of the Joint Video Team, Thomas Wiegand (Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, HHI), Gary J. Sullivan (Microsoft), Ajay K. Luthra (Motorola) and Jens-Rainer Ohm (RWTH Aachen). The Joint Video Team is sponsored by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

The Emmy is the most distinguished television prize in the United States and is awarded by three organizations. NATAS presents the awards for films and programs shown during the daytime as well as for sports and news broadcasts and for technical categories. Evening programs are honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) based in Los Angeles, and foreign TV broadcasts are acknowledged by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences based in New York.

This is the second time the H.264 video standard has won an Emmy, having already received the Primetime Emmy for Technology & Engineering from ATAS in Hollywood in 2008. Prof. Dr. Thomas Wiegand can be particularly proud of this second award, for the developers of H.264/MPEG4-AVC are the only ones to have received two Emmys in different categories. The Fraunhofer scientist has written and edited a comprehensive set of H.264 specifications and also contributed significantly to the standard’s technical content together with his team at the HHI. Much of the work carried out at the HHI has been sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).