Motorola to Support Active Format Description in its MPEG Products to Drive HD Programming Rollout

Motorola’s AFD-supported products allow broadcasters, programmers and operators to easily convert high-definition content to standard-definition

NAB 2008 – LAS VEGAS – April 2008 – Motorola (NYSE:MOT) today announced its support of Active Format Description (AFD), which allows high-definition (HD) content to be converted to standard-definition (SD) downstream. As many programmers today derive SD content from HD signals to save transponder space and to make distribution easier, our support for this standard gives our customers greater control over their content, easing their transition from SD to all HD content. Motorola will support AFD in its MPEG products, including its HD encoders and its DSR-6000 series digital satellite receiver/transcoders.

“Motorola has made a long-term commitment to the advancement of digital video technology and our support of the AFD standard, which is already being embedded by broadcasters into their content, is another solution we’re proud to provide to our customers,” said Doug Means, vice president and general manager, IP Video Services, Motorola Home & Networks Mobility. "Our AFD-supported products provide another means of ensuring that our video delivery technology meets viewers’ image quality expectations, and that the signal sent over satellite makes it to viewer’s TVs as the content producer intended for an ideal viewing experience.”

AFD data allows the downstream devices to interpret how a SD picture should be pulled out of a HD stream. For consumers with SD service only, this means that the picture they view is the one that the content producer originally intended by helping control aspect ratios, for example, maintaining a movie in letterbox format with black bars at the top and bottom.

Motorola’s AFD-supported HD encoders and the DSR-6010 accepts the embedded data in the video from the content producer and inserts it into the broadcast MPEG stream. The DSR-6010 processes these fields when receiving HD content and properly formats the SD output signal.