ITU-R Study Group 6 Progress Report 2019–2020

Amir Nafez is the general director of technical evaluation, supervision, and frequency planning at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), Teheran, Iran, the exclusive national broadcaster of Iran since 2014. Since joining IRIB in 1995, he has been responsible for TV and radio network planning. In 2010, he was appointed as the deputy director general of the network planning department, helping to lead TV and radio planning projects. He was appointed as the chairman of the ITU-R Working Party 6A in October 2015, after having served in other positions.

Paul Gardiner is the standards manager in the Advanced Technology Team of European Professional Engineering at Sony Europe B.V., Basingstoke, U.K. He studied electronic engineering at the University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K., before joining the Independent Broadcasting Authority in Winchester, U.K., in 1974, followed by roles in successor bodies Independent Television Commission (ITC) and Ofcom, London, U.K. His activities have included television technical regulation and managing international collaborative research projects. He is currently the co-chair of the Technology Committee 34CS Media Systems, Control and Service. He has participated in the work of the ITU-R for many years and has chaired the Rapporteur Group on HDR since early 2016. He is a chartered engineer, a member of the U.K. ’s Institution of Engineering and Technology and a SMPTE Fellow.

Andy Quested started working as a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)’s technical assistant in 1978, becoming a videotape editor in 1985, where he worked on many comedy, children’s, and documentary series, editing all episodes of Keeping Up Appearances ! In 1998, he moved to a new BBC technology department working on the BBC’s first HD programs. He is a technical lead for the Digital Production Partnership’s (DPP’s) Application Specification (AS)-11 format and co-chairs the European Broadcasting Union Video Systems Strategic Group. He became a SMPTE Fellow in 2014. He was the the document editor for the first SMPTE Technical Specification for the U.K’.s DPP IMF application. In ITU-R Working Party 6C, he chaired the Rapporteur Group that developed the HDR Recommendation until 2015, when he became the chair of the Working Party 6C itself.