MPEG Industry Forum

Sebastian Moeritz
President, MPEGIF / CEO, dicas

Sebastian is an entrepreneur with an extensive business experience in a number of international markets. After studies in social sciences and economics, he has previously been specialising in property and investment.

Since 1996 he has been involved in a number of information technology related ventures and joined dicas, a developer of real-time video coding solutions, based in Germany, as its CEO in the beginning of 2001. dicas is an MPEG-focused video coding specialist and a leading developer of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, MPEG-4 and 3GPP compliant real-time video coding solutions providing the industry with the highest quality core technology for digital video.

Sebastian is the President of the MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF) since 2004 and has been on MPEGIF's Board of Directors since 2002 serving as Treasurer.

Sebastian is a regular chairman, speaker and panelist at industry events and conferences accross Europe, North America and Asia as well as the author of various articles and opinions in broadcast and multimedia publications. He is also the co-author of the book "Understanding MPEG-4 - Technology and Business Insights" (with Prof. Dr. Klaus Diepold of the Technical University of Munich, Germany).

He is listed in "Cable and Satellite Europe's Euro 50 for 2004", which features the leaders in Broadband and Pay-TV across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

David Price
Vice President, MPEGIF / Vice President, Harmonic Inc.

David Price is currently Vice President, Business Development at Harmonic Inc., based in Sunnyvale, California where he is responsible for pioneering Harmonic's leading position in digital video broadcast, distribution and IP based delivery technologies.

David was previously Vice-President with TV/COM International, in San Diego (formerly Oak Communications), where he was responsible for the Sales Account and Operations management functions. TV/COM produced the world's first MPEG-2 DVB video encoding systems. Originally from the UK, David came to the US as Vice President of M/A-COM Linkabit, now Hughes Network Systems.

David has over 19 years experience in the telecommunication industry during which he has successfully carried out executive management responsibilities in sales, engineering and operations and general management functions for satellite and terrestrial based communications technology providers. David has written many articles for trade publications and journals around the world and has also appeared on a number of business television and radio programs in the US, Europe and the Middle East.

David has lectured at UCSD and is a frequent guest speaker at many of the worlds leading symposiums on advance communications technology. Originally, an electronics engineer on the design team of the worlds first CAT scan system, he graduated from CIT with a Fellowship MBA and has an Honors Bachelors degree in Cybernetics, Instrument Physics and Mathematics.

Benjamin Schwarz
International IPTV Projects Manager - Content Division, France Telekom

Benjamin Schwarz has 19 years of international experience in consulting and Telco organisations. His 7 keywords are: Innovation, Technology, Management, Business, International, Passion and Customer focus.

He joined France Telecom in 2001 where he spent three years managing R&D projects and he currently runs international TVoDSL deployments.

In 2000 Benjamin was CTO of a digital sheet music internet start-up (NASDAQ MMUS).
In 1998 he founded Intoo to deliver personalisation solutions within Unilog a 5000 person services company where he spent 10 years.

Benjamin has a BA from King's College London in Computer science and completed the CEDEP course within INSEAD.

Nicola BRY
Head of Product & Services, T-ONLINE France

Nicolas BRY is head of Product & Services division at T-ONLINE France, managing a team of 30 people working on Internet access, VoIP and IPTV portfolio, Portal activities, and Content Acquisition.

He has 15 years of experience in Marketing Innovation & Product Development in Telecommunications and IT Services industries. Nicolas has worked for strategic consulting firm BRAXTON (Deloitte & Touche) developing Media and Telecoms practice for 6 years. He further held management marketing position at SFR-Vodafone, working on broadband & wireless access technologies, UNILOG, developing France Télécom key account, and at T-ONLINE France, managing IPTV & Triple Play Program.

Nicolas holds an engineering degree in telecommunications from French Grande Ecole SUPELEC. He teaches Strategic Marketing and CRM classes at EM LYON Business School.

Helmut Leopold
Chairman, Broadband Services Forum / Managing Director Platform and Technology Management, Telekom Austria

Since 1999 Helmut Leopold is with Telekom Austria where he currently holds the position of the Managing Director Platform and Technology Management. He is responsible for implementing new technologies and the realization of the new services in the infrastructure of Telekom Austria. Before,he had filled various management positions at Alcatel since 1994. From 1989 to 1994 he served as a research engineer at Alcatel ELIN Research Center where he covered the fields of high performance networking and multimedia communications.

Mr. Leopold has been always actively involved in European projects in broadband (ESPRIT, RACE, ACTS and COST) and in international standardization (ETSI). He is a member of various task forces in telecommunication programs of the Austrian Government, and since 1997 he has been a lecturer on Broadband Communications at the University of Technology of Vienna and he has been evaluator in the R&D programmes of the European commission. He is also Vice president of the Austrian Research Center Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien (FTW) and is president of the IPV6 Task Force in Austria. Mr. Leopold holds a degree in Electronics and Communications from the Technical College HTBLV Rankweil, Austria and a degree in Computer Science from the University of Technology of Vienna

Sebastian Kramer
CEO, Quative
Sebastian Kramer, is the CEO of Quative Limited, a Kudelski Group Company (SWX:KUD). Sebastian, an IPTV veteran and previously co-founder of Thidspace, an Alcatel/Oracle JV, is leading Quative, which was formed in the UK in October 2005, with a focus on the development and marketing of a next generation IPTV service delivery platform called Quative IPTV Service Platform (QSP) and on the provision of system integration services enabling end-to-end IPTV service provider solutions.

Paul Whitehead
Executive Director Advanced Access, AT&T

Paul started his career with Bell Labs working as a System Engineer on transmission systems. He worked on the team that helped develop SONET. He was divested to Bell Communications Research where he worked on new services such as ISDN videoconferencing and Frame Relay. Paul transferred to U S WEST in 1994 where he worked on their early ADSL deployments which eventually led to the trials of video over VDSL. Paul led the technical team responsible for deploying triple play services over VDSL to over 50,000 customers in Phoenix in 2000. After the Qwest purchase of U S WEST, Paul went to work for CableLabs leading their Home Networking, Go2Broadband, and competitive intelligence teams. Paul is now an Executive Director on SBC's Network team helping drive SBC's video plans over their new FTTP and FTTN infrastructures. He has an M.S. and B.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

David Gillies
Director of Technology, Pace Micro Technologies

David Gillies joined Pace Micro Technology in September 2004 to spearhead the Company’s latest moves into next generation set-top box and related technologies. He leads a team of technology experts looking at expanding the opportunities for personal video recording (PVR), high definition television, broadband delivery technologies and developing new concepts leading to innovative products.

In addition to expanding and refocusing Pace’s existing Advanced Technology activities, David is responsible for Product Management, ensuring the continuity of current and future product roadmaps. David joins Pace from his own consultancy isis digital, which he founded after over seven years at BetaResearch in Munich, Germany, where he was Managing Director and Chief Technology Officer.

Prior to this David was at Thomson Multimedia’s Corporate Research centres in Strasbourg and Paris, France, ITT Intermetall in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, and GEC McMichael in Slough in the UK. David has also been a member of the DVB Steering Board for over seven years.

Toby Russell
CEO, 3Vision

Toby has wide ranging expereience in the content market place. Over the years, he has built up many strategic business relationships with key contacts around the world including Hollywood Studios, leading broadcasters like the BBC and major music lables such as EMI and Warner Music. HIs work history includes:

Managing director of content solutions division of Yes Television, a content delivery softwar company specialising in Video-On-Demand

Executive Director of sales for television division of Walt Disney.

Represented Disney on the board of HBO MOvie channels in central Europe.

In addition, Toby is a director of mobile content company Fast info and serves as a board member and trustee of Watermans arts centre in West London.

Tiaan Schutte
Vice President Information Communication Entertainment, Alcatel

Tiaan Schutte joined Alcatel in 2003. Currently, he is Vice President of Alcatel's Information, Communication and
Entertainment (ICE) business unit where he is responsible for Alcatel's global IPTV activities.

Prior to his current role, Tiaan held Product Line Managementand R&D positions within the ICE group.

Prior to joining Alcatel, Tiaan held key management positions at Thirdspace Living (acquired by Alcatel in April 2003), nCUBE
Corporation, Broadcast Projects International and Mindport MCT. He further contributed at Canal+ Technologies and
Irdeto Consultants in R&D and portfolio management.

Tiaan studied BComm Accounting at Pretoria University and is currently completing his MBA

Sean McCarthy,
Board Member, MPEGIF / Chief Scientist, Modulus Video

Dr. Sean McCarthy brings to Modulus Video many years’ experience as an engineer and research scientist in small and large organizations. Before joining Modulus Video, Sean helped found ViaSense where, as Chief Scientist, he led technical development of commercial applications based on understanding the human visual system. Some of the applications that Sean developed include: a system for optimizing video compression; a system for optimizing video displays; methods of extracting natural features in images and video; and methods of measuring the perceptual quality of processed images and video. He is also the author of several papers on retinal processing and holds several domestic and international patents on image and signal processing. In addition to his role at Modulus Video, Sean is currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the MPEG Industry Forum. Sean earned his Ph.D. in bioengineering jointly at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.

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