Milestone-Proposal:Digital TV Standards Convertor
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Docket #:2024-08
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To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation? No
Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes
Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes
Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes
Was it of at least regional importance? Yes
Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? Yes
Has the IEEE Section(s) in which the plaque(s) will be located agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? Yes
Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? Yes
Has the owner of the site agreed to have it designated as an IEEE Milestone? Yes
Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:
1977
Title of the proposed milestone:
Digitalization of TV Standards Convertor, 1977
Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance; if personal name(s) are included, such name(s) must follow the achievement itself in the citation wording: Text absolutely limited by plaque dimensions to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons.
The world's first all-digital, high-resolution TV standards convertor was successfully commercialized here at KDDI. By making prompt use of semiconductor memory, the equipment has been downsized and stabilized for easy operation, while adaptive image processing has minimized resolution degradation and improved transmitted picture quality, bringing international TV relay much closer to the people.
200-250 word abstract describing the significance of the technical achievement being proposed, the person(s) involved, historical context, humanitarian and social impact, as well as any possible controversies the advocate might need to review.
Since TV standards conversion is mandatory in transmission between countries that use different TV standards, its development can be said to be the history of international TV transmission itself. It has contributed greatly to interconnecting people around the world by providing live coverage of international sporting events as well as major news broadcasts. In the proposed milestone, KDDI has succeeded in digitalizing the previously analog convertor for TV standards, and has also succeeded in significantly reducing the resolution degradation caused by the conversion. In other words, by going from analog to digital, the number of simultaneous relays was increased due to the space savings resulting from the drastic downsizing, making international TV transmission closer to the people. In addition, the advanced signal processing has dramatically improved the picture quality, whereas in the past, we had no choice but to accept large picture quality degradation such as blurriness. Furthermore, this digitalization has laid the foundation for applying sophisticated image processing technology which has developed rapidly since then, leading to further evolution of TV standards conversion such as the introduction of motion compensated frame rate conversion, so that now international TV programs can be enjoyed with picture quality almost as good as that of local programs.
IEEE technical societies and technical councils within whose fields of interest the Milestone proposal resides.
Broadcast Technology Society
Circuits and Systems Society
Communications Society
In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?
IEEE Tokyo Section
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone:
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) paying for milestone plaque(s):
Unit: IEEE Tokyo Section
Senior Officer Name: Kiyoharu Aizawa
IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:
Unit: IEEE Tokyo Section
Senior Officer Name: Kiyoharu Aizawa
IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):
IEEE Section: IEEE Tokyo Section
IEEE Section Chair name: Kiyoharu Aizawa
Milestone proposer(s):
Proposer name: Ryoichi Kawada
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public
Proposer name: Hajime Nakamura
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public
Proposer name: Yasuhiro Takishima
Proposer email: Proposer's email masked to public
Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.
Street address(es) and GPS coordinates in decimal form of the intended milestone plaque site(s):
KDDI Corporation, Garden Air Tower, 3-10-10, Iidabashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-8460 JAPAN (coordinates: 35.700463, 139.750537)
Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.
Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. Corporate building
Are the original buildings extant?
Yes
Details of the plaque mounting:
At the exhibition space in the reception floor (28th floor).
How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public?
The plaque is publicly accessible. The plaque site is within KDDI Headquarter, and is under the proper security control. The visitors can access with prior appointment to KDDI.
Who is the present owner of the site(s)?
KDDI Corporation
What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? If personal names are included in citation, include detailed support at the end of this section preceded by "Justification for Inclusion of Name(s)". (see section 6 of Milestone Guidelines)
For international transmission of TV programs such as sporting events, especially those between regions with different TV standards, such as between Europe and Japan, telecommunications carriers or broadcasters perform TV standards conversion.
TV standards conversion has been performed since international TV transmission began more than half a century ago[1]. In the SDTV (standard TV) era, the number of lines that made up one screen (frame) and the number of frames per second (frame rate) were converted. HDTV and 4K no longer require conversion of the number of lines, but the frame rate difference still remains and conversion is still necessary(Fig.1).
In the early days of TV standards conversion, a photoelectric conversion device was used in the receiver side country, in which the transmitted video signal was projected on a CRT and re-captured by a camera of the domestic standard. Its image quality was poor, because blur was large due to the re-capturing. Subsequently, an all-electronic device using a quartz ultrasonic delay line was newly developed[2], but it was still analog and had the following two major issues. (1) The size was huge (room capacity more than several tens of square meters) and it required high maintenance costs due to the unstability of quartz ultrasonic delay lines. (2) Although the image quality degradation (reduction in resolution) was improved compared to the photoelectric type, it was still significant because of the intra-field conversion.
Regarding (2), due to memory limitations, the lines after conversion were obtained by weighted addition from only two lines in the same field before conversion (lines from multiple fields could not be used). This caused the problem of insufficient preservation of vertical resolution, resulting in blurring. This was an especially important issue in Japan, where sharp image quality tends to be preferred.
The historic significance of the achievement
Meanwhile, semiconductor memory technology was rapidly developing as the technological background at the time. KDD, the Japanese major international telecommunication operator at that time, was quick to recognize this trend and succeeded in developing a digital standards convertor that simultaneously solved the above two issues, i.e., the equipment size and the picture quality, and was the first in the world to introduce it commercially[3].
Specifically, the use of semiconductor memory instead of quartz ultrasonic delay lines has enabled digitalization and miniaturization (the size of the equipment was about 1.5 racks). Furthermore, adaptive image processing (utilizing frame memory in addition to line memory) based on still/moving judgment was introduced and used to convert the number of lines between 625 and 525, resulting in conversion with minimal reduction in resolution. In addition, the use of semiconductor memory has made the equipment more stable and the adjustment work easy. These factors made it possible to achieve the world’s first commercial introduction of this technology.
The ways the achievement was a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement of existing technology
By going from analog to digital, we have achieved the following.
(1) Significant size reduction
(2) Unparalleled improvement in image quality through superior signal processing
(3) Opening up of possibilities for more advanced signal processing afterward
The following is how to suppress resolution reduction in detail (the second item above). Still/moving judgments (judging for each pixel whether it belongs to the still or moving part) are made, and for the still area, inter-field line interpolation is performed using the lines of two adjacent fields to suppress resolution reduction. In the case of interlaced video, which was the globally adopted method for TV broadcasting at the time, the vertical line positions of two consecutive fields are different, so in the case of a still picture, the two fields are considered to be a single still picture and line interpolation is performed to minimize the resolution reduction. On the other hand, for the moving area, intra-field line interpolation using line memory is performed in the previous and the next fields, respectively, and the final result is obtained by their weighted addition according to the field interpolation ratio(Fig.2).
The rapid invention and implementation of a method that not only employs digital frame memory but also takes full advantage of its capabilities has led to the realization of this sophisticated equipment.
Its importance to the evolution of electrical and computer engineering and science
The digitalization of the TV standards convertor has dramatically improved picture quality, whereas previously we had no choice but to accept images with significant picture quality degradation such as blurring, etc. In addition, the smaller size has made it possible to increase the number of simultaneous relays because of space saving. Thus, the commercial success of the digital convertor led to the significant evolution of digital TV transmission and brought international TV relay closer to the people.
Further, this digitalization has laid the foundation for applying sophisticated image processing technology which has developed rapidly since then, leading to its further development. One of the major advances was the introduction of motion-compensated frame-rate conversion in the late 1980s, and as improvements were made, we can now enjoy international TV programs with picture quality that is almost the same as that of local programs.
Its importance to regional/national/international development Its benefits to humanity
Since TV standards convertors are mandatory in transmission between countries that use different TV standards, its development can be said to be the history of international TV transmission itself. It has contributed greatly to interconnecting people around the world by providing live coverage of international sporting events such as the Olympics and the World Championships, as well as major news broadcasts.
References
[1] “Milestones:First Transpacific Reception of a Television (TV) Signal via Satellite, 1963,” https://ethw.org/Milestones:First_Transpacific_Reception_of_a_Television_(TV)_Signal_via_Satellite,_1963
[2] E. R. Rout and R. E. Davies, “Electronic standards conversion for transatlantic color television,” J.SMPTE, vol. 77, no. 1, pp. 12–16, 1968.
[3] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto, and K. Amano, “Digital standards converter by adaptive intra-frame line interpolation,” IEEE Trans., vol. COM-26, no. 10, pp. 1413–1420, Oct. 1978.
What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?
In the past, analog delay lines (crystal ultrasonic delay lines) were used, which were huge even for a single line delay and difficult to adjust. In addition, image quality was poor (low resolution) because temporal correlation could not be used during conversion due to memory limitations. To solve these problems, in addition to the advent of semiconductor memory, it was necessary to invent the revolutionary idea of adaptive line interpolation based on still/moving judgment. Such advanced adaptive processing could not be achieved by analog processing, but was realized only by digitization.
What features set this work apart from similar achievements?
(1) This work rapidly adopted semiconductor memory, which had just appeared at the time, which led to the miniaturization of the equipment.
(2) This work invented and introduced a groundbreaking method that used the miniaturized memory to judge still/moving for each part of the image, adaptively changing processing between still and moving parts of the image, and suppressed resolution degradation in still areas that are particularly noticeable to the human eye.
(3) This work laid the foundation for the development of subsequent TV standards conversion technology, bringing international TV relay closer to the people.
Why was the achievement successful and impactful?
Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement: Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.
The followings are references. The corresponding PDF files are attached at the next "supporting materials" section.
[1] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto, and K. Amano, “Digital standards converter by adaptive intra-frame line interpolation,” IEEE Trans., vol. COM-26, no. 10, pp. 1413–1420, Oct. 1978.
In Section 5 "CONCLUSIONS" of this paper, 1977 is specified as the year of the commercial launch of the digital TV standards convertor.
[2] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto and K. Amano: “A digital standards-converter for television using intra-frame line interpolation techniques”, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications, pp.7C1–7C5 (1974).
[3] United States Patent No.3970776: "SYSTEM FOR CONVERTING THE NUMBER OF LINES OF A TELEVISION SIGNAL", July 20, 1976.
[4] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto, K. Amano, K. Kuruma and G. Demizu: "Digital TV standards converter by intraframe line interpolation method", Proc. Annual Convention of ITE, 11-11, pp.269-270, 1974. (in Japanese)
[5] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto, K. Amano, G. Demizu and K. Kuruma: "Control method for digital television standards converter", Proc. Annual Convention of ITE, 2-15, pp.47-48, 1973. (in Japanese)
[6] K. Kinuhata, I. Takahashi, G. Demizu, K. Kuruma and K. Sato: "Digitization experiment of television standards converter", Proc. Annual Convention of ITE, 2-16, pp.49-50, 1973. (in Japanese)
Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC): All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.
[1] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto, and K. Amano, “Digital standards converter by adaptive intra-frame line interpolation,” IEEE Trans., vol. COM-26, no. 10, pp. 1413–1420, Oct. 1978.
Media:IEEEtransCOM_Digital_Standards_Converter_by_Adaptive_Intra-frame_Line_Interpolation.pdf
[2] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto and K. Amano: “A digital standards-converter for television using intra-frame line interpolation techniques”, Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications, pp.7C1–7C5 (1974).
[3] United States Patent No.3970776: "SYSTEM FOR CONVERTING THE NUMBER OF LINES OF A TELEVISION SIGNAL", July 20, 1976.
Media:US3970776_SYSTEM_FOR_CONVERTING_THE_NUMBER_OF_LINES_OF_A_TELEVISION_SIGNAL.pdf
[4] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto, K. Amano, K. Kuruma and G. Demizu: "Digital TV standards converter by intraframe line interpolation method", Proc. Annual Convention of ITE, 11-11, pp.269-270, 1974. (in Japanese)
Media:EnglishTranslation_Digital_TV_standards_converter_by_intraframe_line_interpolation_method.pdf Media:Japanese_Digital_TV_standards_converter_by_intraframe_line_interpolation_method.pdf
[5] K. Kinuhata, H. Sasaki, H. Yamamoto, K. Amano, G. Demizu and K. Kuruma: "Control method for digital television standards converter", Proc. Annual Convention of ITE, 2-15, pp.47-48, 1973. (in Japanese)
Media:EnglishTranslation_Control_Method_for_Digital_Television_Standards_Converter.pdf Media:Japanese_Control_Method_for_Digital_Television_Standards_Converter.pdf
[6] K. Kinuhata, I. Takahashi, G. Demizu, K. Kuruma and K. Sato: "Digitization experiment of television standards converter", Proc. Annual Convention of ITE, 2-16, pp.49-50, 1973. (in Japanese)
Media:EnglishTranslation_Digitization_Experiment_of_Television_Standards_Converter.pdf Media:Japanese_Digitization_Experiment_of_Television_Standards_Converter.pdf
Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator." Note that there are multiple texts of the letter depending on whether an IEEE organizational unit other than the section will be paying for the plaque(s).
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