NEW YORK—The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the “Excellence in Production Technology” Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leighton, co-founder of Akamai, received Lifetime Achievement Honors at the 76th Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards held on Dec. 4th at the Prince George Ballroom in New York.

During the ceremony, hosted by David Pogue, Dr. Leighton’s Lifetime Achievement Honors reflected a career where he patented more than 50 developments surrounding content delivery, internet protocols, algorithms for networks, cryptography and digital rights management, and he created the largest distributed computing platform, which today delivers and secures tens of millions of requests per second to billions of users around the world.

Prior to the ceremony, Adam Sharp, president & CEO, of NATAS shared: “It is a privilege to celebrate the individuals and companies who continue to redefine how technology can deliver communications to consumers around the world. I applaud Dr. Leighton’s many years of development and leadership, plus the countless technological achievements he has realized as co-founder and now CEO of Akamai.”

Joe Inzerillo, Chair of the NATAS Technology & Engineering Committee said: “As the technological landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, the pioneering work that has come from this year’s class of honorees is astounding. Congratulations to all this year’s Technology & Engineering Emmys winners.”

“Every time you stream content to your viewers, every time you shop online or check your bank balance, or hold a virtual meeting with colleagues at work, chances are very good that you’re using Akamai or the technology that Akamai employees pioneered,” added Dr. Leighton. “Our goal today is the same as it was in the beginning - to power and protect life online by making the internet fast, reliable, and secure today, for billions of people a trillion times a day.”

NASA+ won the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy for its “2024 Total Solar Eclipse: Through the Eyes of NASA”. This was a live broadcast and streaming event for the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, featuring expert commentary, multiple telescope feeds (including a dedicated one for the corona), and coverage from across North America, offering science, stunning visuals, and citizen science opportunities like Eclipse Soundscapes, allowing everyone to experience this rare cosmic event even if not in the path of totality.

Other 2025 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards Honorees at the Dec. 4 ceremony included:

• Pioneering Standardization of VOD Asset Metadata Distribution Specifications: CableLabs
• 360 Degree Consumer Video Capture, Editing and Presentation Technologies: GoPro; Insta360; Google; Adobe; Apple; ByteDance
• Specification for AV1: Alliance for Open Media
• SMPTE ST 2067 — Standardization of Interoperable Master Format (IMF): SMPTE/IMF USER GROUP; Advanced Media Workflow Association (AMWA); Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI); University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center (USC-ETC)
• Pioneering Mastering HDR Display: Dolby Labs
• AI Image/Video Enhancement for High Quality TV Catalog Restoration: MTI Films; Topaz Labs
• Standardization of Common Media Application Format (CMAF): MPEG Systems (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 3)

Also celebrated at the December 4th ceremony are the following Technology Pioneers:

• For the pioneering concepts of the light valve: Michael Faraday and John Kerr
• For the pioneering development of the photocell: Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel, Julius Johann, Phillipp Ludwig Elster, and Hans Friedrich Karl Geitel
• For the pioneering development of optical-input facsimile transmission, Carlo Mario Perosino, Édouard Belin, and Arthur Korn

For more information, please visit the website at http://www.theemmys.tv/

NEW YORK & LOS ANGELES—The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) has unveiled the recipients of the 2024 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and announced that the ceremony honoring the recipients will take place at the NAB New York media and technology convention in New York, October 2024, at the Javits Center.

“The Technology & Engineering Emmy Award was the first Emmy Award issued in 1949 and it laid the groundwork for all the other Emmys to come,” said Adam Sharp, CEO & president, NATAS. “We are extremely happy about honoring these prestigious individuals and companies, together with NAB, where the intersection of innovation, technology and excitement in the future of television can be found.”

“As we commemorate 75 years of this prestigious award, this year’s winners join a legacy of visionaries who use technology to shape the future of television. Congratulations to all!” said Dina Weisberger, co-chair, NATAS Technology Achievement Committee.

“As we honor the diamond class of the technology Emmys, this class typifies the caliber of innovation we have been able to enjoy for the last 75 years.  Congratulations to all the winners.” added Joe Inzerillo, co-chair, NATAS Technology Achievement Committee.  

NATAS said that the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards are awarded to a living individual, a company, or a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.

2024 Technology & Engineering Emmy Award honorees include: 

• Pioneering Development of Inexpensive Video Technology for Animation. Winners: Lyon Lamb (Bruce Lyon and John Lamb). 
• Large Scale Deployment of Smart TV Operating Systems. Winners: Samsung, LG, Sony, Vizio, Panasonic. 
• Creation and Implementation of HDR Static LUT, Single-Stream Live Production. Winners: BBC and NBC.
• Pioneering Technologies Enabling High Performance Communications Over Cable TV Systems. Winners: Broadcom, General Instrument (CommScope), LANcity (CommScope), 3COM (HP). 
• Pioneering Development of Manifest-based Playout for FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming Television). Winners: Amagi, Pluto TV, Turner.
• Targeted Ad Messages Delivered Across Paused Media. Winner: DirecTV
• Pioneering Development of IP Address Geolocation Technologies to Protect Content Rights. Winners: MLB, Quova. 
• Development of Stream Switching Technology between Satellite Broadcast and Internet to Improve Signal Reliability. Winner: DirecTV
• Design and Deployment of Efficient Hardware Video Accelerators for Cloud. Winners: Netint, AMD, Google, Meta.
• Spectrum Auction Design. Winners: FCC and Auctionomics.
• TV Pioneers – Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT). Winners: Karl Ferdinand Braun, Boris Lvovich Rosing, Alan Archibald Campbell Swinton. 
• TV Pioneers – Development of lighting, ventilation, and lens-coating technologies. Winners: Hertha Ayrton, Katharine Burr Blodgett.

NEW YORK—The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) has announced the recipients of the 73rd  Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards. The ceremony will take place April 25 at the Wynn Encore Ballroom in Las Vegas during the NAB Show (April 23-27).

“The Technology & Engineering Emmy Award was the first Emmy Award issued in 1949 and it laid the groundwork for all the other Emmys to come,” said Adam Sharp, CEO & president, NATAS. “We are extremely happy about honoring these prestigious companies, again in partnership with NAB, where the intersection of innovation, technology and excitement in the future of television can be found.”

The Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards are awarded to a living individual, a company, or a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.

The 73rd Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards honored: 

• Shadow TV for “Video & Audio Search based on Index Feeds coming from Multiple Sources.”
• Go Pro and Socinext for “In Camera Sensor and Software Stabilization.”
• Marvin H. White and Northrop Grumman Mission Systems Group for “Correlated Double Sampling for Image Sensors.”
• Peter J. W. Noble for “Pioneering Development of an Image-Sensor Array with Buried-Photodiode Structure.”
• MPEG and W3C – WebFonts Working Group for “Standardization of Font Technology for Custom Downloadable Fonts and Typography for Web and TV Devices.”
• Apple, MLB Advanced Media, Microsoft and Netflix for “Common Key Technology of OTT Content.”
• Cable Labs, OATC and SCTE for “Development of the Event Scheduling and Notification Interface (ESNI).”
• Arvato Systems Group, EditShare and Primestream (Ross) for “Cloud Enabled Remote Editing and Project Management.”
• Bell South, Cablevision, DirecTV and NCM Solutions for “Pioneering Development of Technologies to collect granular linear TV Viewership Data including STBs, ACR, Connected TV’s for Measurement, Marketing & Advertising.”
• Apple, MLB Advanced Media, MPEG and 3GPP for “Standardization of HTTP Encapsulated Protocols.”
• Haivision and Vitec for “Management of IP Multicast Video Distribution to Desktops and TVs in News & Media Production Facilities.”

In addition Maurice Leblanc and Paul Nipkow were named 2021 Television Technology Pioneers. This honor recognizes historical individuals whose work has materially affected television but has not been recognized by a NATAS Technology & Engineering Emmy Award. 

Maurice Leblanc has been inducted as a Television Pioneer for the first suggestions of color TV and the use of the cathode-ray tube.  For the first patent for a complex television system, Paul Nipkow has also joined this celebrated group.

After studying electrical engineering and working on railway projects, Leblanc established his own company. On 1880 November 2, he submitted a paper, “Study of the electrical transmission of luminous impressions,” to the French journal La Lumière électrique (Electric Light). In it, he outlined the principles of television and was probably the first to suggest color images (based on a beam-splitting prism) and the first to suggest the use of a cathode-ray tube (CRT) in the display. He also suggested vibrating mirrors for camera scanning and a variable-aperture modulator. Many of his suggestions were used in later television systems.

While still a student, Nipkow conceived a complete television system and was the first to patent it. His use of a selenium photocell was common by that time, but his use of a light valve based on Nicol prisms and the Faraday magnetooptical effect was new. His main creation, however, was a spinning disk with a spiral of perforations for scanning, an idea adopted widely (with modifications) by many other inventors and arguably formed the basis (40 years later) of the first television system able to reproduce a recognizable human face.

NEW YORK—The winners of the 71st annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards were announced Wednesday, Jan. 15, recognizing innovation and achievement in areas ranging from imaging sensor development to pioneering work on a public cloud-based media supply chain.

The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) will honor this year’s recipients in partnership with the National Association of Broadcasters during the 2020 NAB Show at the Wynn Encore Hotel and Spa on April 19.

“The Technology & Engineering Emmy Award was the first Emmy Award issued in 1949, and it laid the groundwork for all the other Emmys to come,” said Adam Sharp, president and CEO of NATAS. “We are especially excited to be honoring Yvette Kanouff with our Lifetime Achievement Award in Technology & Engineering.”

Describing Kanouff as one of the “talented and innovative leaders” who has made “the incredible world of television possible,” Robert Seidel, chairman of the NATAS Technology & Engineering Achievement Committee, pointed out that she spearheaded “transformational technologies,” such as video on-demand, cloud DVR, digital and on-demand ads, streaming security and privacy. “The National academy is happy to be honoring her with our Lifetime Achievement Award in Technology,” he said

Winners of the 2020 Technical/Engineering Achievement Awards include:

• Adobe for a pioneering system for live performance-based animation using facial recognition;
• Apple, Google, LG, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Samsung for HTML5 development and deployment of a full TV experience on any device;
• AWS, Discovery, Evertz, Fox NE&O (Walt Disney Television) and SDVI for pioneering public cloud-based linear media supply chains;
• Sling TV, Sony PlayStation Vue and Zattoo for pioneering development of large scale, cloud-served, broadcast-quality linear channel transmission to consumers;
• Dell (Isilon), IBM, Masstech and Quantum for early development of HSM systems that create a pivotal improvement in broadcast workflows;
• Cable Labs for pioneering development and deployment of hybrid fiber coax network architecture;
• Bell Labs and Michael Tompsett for pioneering development of the CCD image sensor;
• AVI West, Dejero, LiveU and TVU Networks for VoCIP (video over bonded cellular internet);
• Canon and Flovel for ultra-high sensitivity HDTV camera; and
• ACL NetworX, Audinate, Audio Engineering Society, Keven Gross, QCS, Telos Alliance and Wheatstone for development of synchronized multichannel uncompressed audio transport over IP networks.

The Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards honor a living individual, a company or a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.

More information is available on the NATAS website.

NEW YORK—A group of companies already know they are going to go home winners as the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences have announced the recipients of the 68th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards.

One of the winners includes Tony Werner, president of technology and product for Comcast Cable, who will receive NATAS’ Lifetime Achievement Award. Werner joined Comcast in 2006 and has overseen developments like DOCSIS 3.0 and the X1 platform. Prior to joining Comcast he was senior vice president and chief technology officer at Liberty Global. He also currently serves as president and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Foundation.
Here are the other winners for the 2016 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards:
Live Production Technology Beyond HD to Achieve Non-Interpolated Video for Instant Replay:

• Evertz
• EVS
• For-A

Concept of Opto-Electric Transduction:

• Telcon (Alcatel Lucent-Submarine Networks)
• Society of Telegraph Engineers (Institute of Engineering and Technology)
• Siemens

Development and Standardization of Media Object Server (MOS) Protocol:

• Media Object Server (MOS) Group

System for Executing Targeted Household Advertising on Linear Television:

• Invidi Technologies
• Visible World

Pioneering Invention and Deployment of Fiber Optic Cable:

• Corning
• Bell Labs/Western Electric (OFS)

Pioneering Technology to Automate the Digital On-Line Assembly of Broadcast Content:

• IBM Corporation
• Laser Pacific/SCAA (Technicolor)

The ceremony recognizing all winners will take place on Jan. 7, 2017 in Las Vegas during CES 2017.