[SatNews] The HISPASAT Customer Engineering team, led by Inés Sanz, has won the Best Young Professional Paper IBC2013 Award, given at this event to the best article submitted by writers aged under 30.

The study, entitled “Retos y oportunidades para el despliegue de la UHDTV” ("Challenges and opportunities for the roll-out of UHDTV"), analyzes one of the key elements for the future of the audiovisual industry—ultra high definition television (UHDTV). The text digs into the technological challenges faced by the audiovisual industry in its endeavours to achieve success with UHDTV.

The deployment of this technology is a key factor for the growth of not only Direct-To-Home (DTH) satellite platforms but also other broadcasting platforms, such as cable or DTT. In order to fully comprehend the progress made and the technological challenges yet to be faced, both from a technical point of view and from a business perspective, this article focuses on HISPASAT's actual experience of broadcasting in ultra high definition (UHD) via satellite, and highlights how these technologies can be applied when designing new UHD services, taking advantage of the excellent performance of the Ku-band Hispasat 1E satellite in Europe and the Ka-band Amazonas 3 satellite for the American continent.

The article also discusses the new, more efficient coding techniques, such as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), and the improvements under development in the DVB-S2 system, and demonstrates how this evolution can be a driver of the audiovisual industry's market which accelerates the roll-out of ultra high definition television, not only for broadcasts of sporting events or for movies, but also for DTH platforms.

Jorge Rodríguez, one of the authors of the article co-written by Aurora Mourelle, took part in a session named “High Efficiency Video Coding – Will It Do Enough?”, which was organized as part of the conferences at the IBC event in Amsterdam. During the session, he outlined the assumptions included in the award-winning article and debate with other experts the future of UHD, the technical and economic possibilities, and improvements to image resolution and quality in video formats.