CESNET Conferences 2006 Has Witnessed the First High-Definition Videoconference in the Czech Republic

Prague: Within the professional international conference CESNET Conference 2006, organized by CESNET, an association of universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the association's establishment on 7 and 8 March in Prague, a unique video conference was performed, using high-definition (HD) video quality. This was the first public demonstration ever of this type of video conference in the Czech Republic and one of the first demonstrations in Europe.

The lecture hall of the Charles University in Celetná street, equipped with a borrowed prototype of an HD projector featuring a full resolution of 1920×1080, was connected via academic high-speed networks with the Research Channel workplace in Seattle (USA, Washington State). Although compression had to be used for the HDV (High-Definition Video) data, the lecture, taking more half an hour, was transmitted between the two points with a data flow rate of 25 Mbps.

Leaders of Internet research gathered in Prague at the CESNET Conference 2006. In response to the invitation of the CESNET association, constructing and developing the national research and education network called CESNET2, more than 100 professionals from 15 countries of Europe as well as from the United States arrived. The main topics included optical networks, network middleware, network monitoring, grids and network applications.

The entire conference was broadcast on the Internet using the RealMedia and WindowsMedia streaming formats and the MediaSite technology. Recordings of the conference will soon be available both in standard and high-definition quality at http://videoserver.cesnet.cz/videoarchiv.php.

Fore more details on the conference, including presentations of individual lecturers and photos, visit http://www.ces.net/conference06/.

The CESNET association was founded by universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The association is currently financed mainly from the resources of the governmental Committee for Research and Education and the resources of the members of the association. The association performs research and development in the area of information and communication technologies, building and developing the national gigabit optical network, CESNET2, designed for research and educational purposes. Due to the research activities and results achieved, the CESNET association acts as a representative of the Czech Republic in the project within which a pan-European network called GEANT2 is constructed, actively taking part also in the implementation of this project. Among other things, the association deals with the utilization of high-speed networks for sharing multimedia data, both synchronously in the form of video conferencing and shared applications and asynchronously, by means of streaming.