91Èȱ¬

At the (the 10th of November) 91Èȱ¬ Research & Development won two of the key awards for recent technical achievements. R&D has a great history of being recognised at these annual awards, but this is the first time for a few years that we have won, and to do so twice is a real coup, and it proves once again our world class innovation credentials. In the Raising the Bar category, Ingex, R&D's automated tapeless production system triumphed. Developed by a team headed up by Lead Research Engineer David Kirby, Ingex is already used by Dragons' Den and 91Èȱ¬ Children's Bamzooki.

Phil de Nier, Matthew Marks, Phil Tudor and John Fletcher accept the award from Martha Lane Fox.

In the "Under the Bonnet" category our Distribution Core Technology team that developed DVB-T2 was awarded the prize. This is the technology that will enable Freeview HD (due to launch to audiences in 2010), and the work recognised with this prize has included some staggering breakthroughs in the deployment of advanced broadcast technology. The DVB-T2 team is headed up by Principal Research Engineer Nick Wells.

Justin Mitchell, Chris Nokes, Andrew Murphy and Martin Thorp receive their award from Martha Lane Fox

Our FM&T colleagues at 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer won the prestigious Judges Award which was collected on behalf of the team by 91Èȱ¬ Online Controller Seetha Kumar. This award was created by the RTS to celebrate the greatest vision in determining how media might develop in the future.

The 91Èȱ¬ R&D High Frame Rate Television Experiment was also shortlisted in the Raising the Bar category but was pipped to the post by Ingex. High Frame Rate (or HFR as it inevitably gets called) is a little known and almost 'blue sky' area of research where we pioneered the use of very very high speed video cameras to produce pictures with breathtaking realism, and which may lead on to the technologies that follow after High Definition, as described in the relevant High Frame Rate white paper.Ìý