TelcoTV: Telcos need analog turnoff prep, says Tandberg

“Telcos have to be concerned about subtitles, audio quality and other information that is associated with that digital signal,” Knudsen said.

There are also concerns about how digital signals appear on consumer TVs. While broadcasters may only be providing an HD signal, some of their content may have been standard-definition quality that was up-converted to be HD. When it is later down-converted to a consumer’s SD set, the result can be a “postage stamp” picture that irritates consumers, Knudsen said. To address this issue, Tandberg is providing Active Format Description (AFD), a signaling method that may be used to determine automatically the proper picture aspect ratio to use during up-conversion and down-conversion processing.

In addition to the analog shutoff solution, Ericsson used TelcoTV to exhibit its integration of IMS and IPTV, and RGB Networks teamed with Tandberg to demonstration local ad insertion into MPEG-4 video.