Sony, Kodak, LaserPacific Share Emmy for Developing 24p Standards

New York (October 17) -- The National Academy of Television Arts& Sciences presented Emmy awards to Sony, Kodak, and LaserPacificMedia for their roles in developing the 24p video standard.

"In 1992, our scientists recognized that with the coming of digitaltelevision, 24fps, progressive-line scanning would provide a vastimprovement in the quality of film images displayed on digitaltelevision," says Mark Gaul, worldwide television marketing manager forKodak's Entertainment Imaging division. "Audiences would finally seeimages on television screens without artifacts and with more of thesubtleties captured on the original film negative that are so importantto visual storytelling."

The 24p video standard also enables a substantial improvement in theefficiency of program transmission. Kodak scientists first discussedthe advantages of a 24p video standard in a technical paper publishedin 1992 by the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture andTelevision Engineers. Kodak scientists strongly proposed theinclusion of 24p in HDTV standards, as well as the technicalimplementation to a SMPTE working group. These standards have beenwidely adopted by the television industry, hardware manufacturers, andpostproduction facilities, and are used throughout the process fromorigination to transmission.

"We believe this is important because the vast majority ofnarrative content -- including episodic dramas, situation comedies,telefilms, and miniseries -- seen in primetime on broadcast and cablechannels is originated on film," Gaul adds.