Brazilian Forum for Digital TV Selects Coding Technologies' and DTS' MPEG-4 aacPlus/DTS Audio Solution for Digital Terrestrial Television Based on ISDB-T

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Coding Technologies today announced that the company’s aacPlus audio solution has been selected by the Brazilian Digital TV Forum for Brazil’s digital terrestrial ISDB-T platform to be officially launched on December 2nd, 2007. A number of channels using the aacPlus audio format were already being broadcast during the recent SET2007 broadcast & cable tradeshow in Sao Paulo. The deployment of Coding Technologies’ highly efficient aacPlus audio codec for emission of stereo and surround sound in SD (Standard Definition) and HD (High Definition) TV services enables broadcasters to deliver more TV programming at lower transmission costs. DTS Digital Surround is implemented to transcode multi-channel audio signals in the set top box. Broadcaster can thereby directly supply surround sound programming to the vast majority of home theater systems.

In the latest EBU (European Broadcasting Union) test of audio compression formats, aacPlus outperformed all other audio codecs in the test field in terms of efficiency while scoring overall audio quality results in the excellent range. Its high level of efficiency makes aacPlus the only codec designed for and suited to any broadcasting application, from mobile, SD and HDTV.

“We have been very impressed by the high audio quality of MPEG-4 aacPlus”, says Paulo Henrique Castro, chairman of the technical committee of Brazil’s SBTVD (Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão Digital – Brazilian System of Digital Television) Development Committee. “We are happy to recommend the adoption of aacPlus as the audio format for all SD and HDTV services and we are now in the final process of discussions to the use of this technology in order to have it officially implemented in the Brazilian system.”

“aacPlus is the most innovative digital audio codec available today, and it has gained broad support by device manufacturers in the past year,” adds Roberto Franco, President of the SET (Sociedade Brasileira de Engenharia de Televisão – Brazilian Television Engineering Society). “The forum clearly supports the recommendation of aacPlus as the audio format to the government. This will bring Brazil into a leading role in the digital TV market of Latin America.”

The Brazilian Digital TV system will be demonstrated at IBC at Coding Technologies’ stand from September 7-11, in hall 12P, stand#100.

Links: Coding Technologies; DTS