Fraunhofer IIS Shows Immersive Sound Future with MPEG-H at CES 2017

One of the most important highlights at CES 2017 was at the Fraunhofer IIS booth, showing final versions of several MPEG-H solutions, in preparation for the rollout of the first broadcast services adopting the standard next year. On display was an MPEG-H enabled LG UHD TV, scheduled to be available this year, and the final version of the MPEG-H enabled 3D Soundbar reference design. Fraunhofer IIS also developed a trademark program for products incorporating its MPEG-H TV Audio System.

In the world of broadcast standards, a few countries depend upon their own specific set of terrestrial broadcast technologies, such as the United States, Japan, Brazil, and China. The rest of the world uses DVB standards. Now that everyone is preparing the next generation of standards to support 4K UHDTV, the news that the new DVB UHD-1 Phase 2 was approved is a big deal. More important for the audio community is the news that MPEG-H is part of that standard.

The International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2015 was widely agreed to be extremely successful. According to the promoters, the best yet (but they always say that). Measured in terms of conference content and quality of the event, we have to agree. It wasn’t the best for product announcements but it was certainly exciting for the technology previews.

In this International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) 2013 report, audioXpress editor-in-chief João Martins looks at how the industry transitioned to 4K and how audio is following with new solutions for multichannel production and distribution. The article was published as Bonus content to existing subscribers with audioXpress Jan. 2014.