WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — SMPTE has awarded the fellow grade of membership to 14 industry leaders. This status is conferred upon those who have attained an outstanding rank among engineers or executives in relevant industries.
The new fellows will be inducted Oct. 23 at the Fellows Luncheon and further recognized Oct. 24, at the SMPTE Honors and Awards Ceremony. The Fellows Luncheon will feature a keynote by SMPTE Fellow Glenn Reitmeier. Both events are in conjunction with the SMPTE 2013 Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition at the Loews Hollywood Hotel.
Paul R. Beck, president and chairman of Foxboro Cable Access Inc., has worked in the broadcasting community since 1965, holding various technical, operations, and management positions at The Boston Catholic Television Center Inc., WSBK-TV, and WHDH-TV, as well as at his alma mater, Emerson College. Beck has been a member of the New England Section of SMPTE since 1977 and, representing the IAVA and AVMA, has served as a technical liaison for PH-7 technical standards. He is a co-founder of the Museum of Broadcast Technology.
Siegfried Foessel of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits has led projects including the DCI Compliance Test Plan and JPEG 2000 standardization for digital cinema and continues to shape the industry through his leadership and participation on the ISO SC29/JPEG systems group, EDCF technical board and FKTG standards body.
Paul Gardiner has been a central figure in regulatory oversight and licensing for commercial television in the United Kingdom, serving first with the Independent Broadcasting Authority and its successors, Independent Television Commission and Ofcom, where he focused on technical standards and information. Now with Sony, Gardiner has been involved with the AMWA-EBU FIMS project and is co-chair of the FIMS Technical Board; a U.K. delegate to ITU R Working Party 6C; and co-chair of SMPTE TC-10E Essence.
Friedrich Gierlinger has been with the IRT, the research and development institute for public broadcasting corporations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, since 1979. He was involved in the development and standardization of measurement techniques for analog and digital television, and currently specializes in quality measurement/control and display technology. He chairs Germany’s national system and measurement expert group; participates in other expert groups focusing on measurement, quality control, and UHD; and is a member of several SMPTE committees.
Douglas Greenfield of Dolby Laboratories Inc. has contributed to the development of professional film-dubbing equipment, miniature noise-reduction modules for C-format VTRs and the Dolby SR single-channel and multitrack modules. Greenfield is active in digital cinema standardization efforts (SMPTE TC-21DC) and serves as a member of AES, SMPTE and AMPAS. He is responsible for Dolby programs in motion-picture postproduction and motion-picture exhibition and projects including 3D presentations.
George C. Hoover, chief technology officer at NEP, was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2011. Hoover is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the American Institute of Architects. Along with Jim Boston, he is the co-author of “TV on Wheels: The Story of Remote Television Production.” He also co-authored the NAB Engineering Handbook section on remote television engineering with Boston.
R. Norman Hurst is a principal software engineer for the products and services division at SRI International, where he developed video test and measurement products including the Visualizer digital video test pattern, a 3D test pattern suite and the TG-100 uncompressed video player with A/V test patterns. He holds 35 U.S. and many international patents, and earned a Technology and Engineering Emmy Award for the MPEG Compliance Bitstreams DTV testing technique. He is involved with standards bodies including SMPTE, ATSC, MPEG and ITU-R.
Chris Johns, chief engineer for broadcast strategy at BSkyB, has led the evolution of the Sky platform from the launch of its multichannel analog satellite offering in 1989 to its HD launch and delivery of 3D broadcasts. In addition to sitting on broadcast groups and societies, Johns chairs the U.K. section of SMPTE and is an honorary fellow of the BKSTS. His current focus is helping Sky to enhance the entertainment delivered across platforms from a common core while maintaining/improving audio and visual quality.
Pierre-Anthony Lemieux, a partner at Sandflow Consulting LLC, works with Hollywood and Silicon Valley clients on worldwide standards, proof-of-concept development and product architecture. His expertise covers the entertainment technology ecosystem. In addition to co-chairing SMPTE TC-31FS, Lemieux represents clients at industry forums, develops standards for metadata and content interchange and implements audio-processing algorithms.
David Siegler, vice president of technical operations for Cox Media Group, manages CMG’s Technical Operations groups to integrate new technologies and processes across various platforms for CMG’s 14 broadcast television stations, one local cable station, 57 radio stations, and eight daily newspapers. He serves as a vice-chair of the ATSC Board of Directors and chair of the ATSC 2.0 Implementation Team; a member of NAB’s Radio and Television Technology committees; and chair of NAB’s Next-Generation Broadcast Platform Task Force. He is also a member of the AFCCE, SMPTE, SBE and the IEEE.
Theodore H. Szypulski has worked at radio and television stations, equipment manufacturers, system integrators and, for the past 22 years, at ESPN Inc. The Society of Broadcast Engineers has certified him as a Professional Broadcast Engineer and named him the 2004 Broadcast Engineer of the Year. Szypulski chairs three SMPTE standards committees and continues to hold the FCC General Radiotelephone Operator license.
Steven D. Tiffen is president and CEO of The Tiffen Company, which has earned a Technical Achievement Award and a Scientific and Engineering Award from AMPAS, as well as multiple Emmys. Tiffen himself has received an Emmy Award for Engineering and a Technical Achievement Award from the Society of Camera Operators. He is an associate member of the ASC and a member of the PMDA Board.
James T. Whittlesey helped to build the digital cinema business at Deluxe Digital Cinema, where he now serves as senior vice president of technology. While at Digital Cinema Initiatives, he contributed to image-compression testing and evaluation, co-authored and edited the company’s digital cinema system specification and chaired the SMPTE working group on digital cinema packaging. Over two decades at Grass Valley, Whittlesey was responsible for the mastering and theatrical presentation of “Jurassic Park III,” the first Hollywood movie to use HD MPEG-2, and helped to develop the GVG Profile, the first prototype video server using Motion JPEG.
Barry Bryan Zegel is senior vice president and general manager of CBS Television City in Los Angeles. During his three decades with CBS, he has served in a variety of engineering, technology, and operations positions. He worked on all three of CBS’ Winter Olympics broadcasts and also facilitated the conversion of CBS programming to HD. In addition, Zegel served as a rapporteur in Geneva on the United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union committee, which established 3D standards.
