Japanese public broadcaster NHK is always on the cutting edge of moving the broadcast industry forward, and this year is no exception.

NHK's Science & Technical Research Laboratories (STRL) is bringing a fresh display of Ultra-HD images and technologies; two stereoscopic 3D displays (one not requiring glasses!); and mobile DTV services based on Japan's digital ISDB-T broadcasting system to the show floor.

NHK has shown Ultra-HD, also called Super Hi-Vision, at past NAB shows starting in 2006. It boasts 4320 scanning lines and a 22.2 multichannel surround sound system and provides 16 times more resolution than "regular" HDTV. This means images look stunning even when projected on huge displays like the 400-inch screen in the NHK Pavilion.

"The display itself is the same as the last time," said Kohji Mitani, chief researcher at NHK STRL. Mitani added that the screened program content will be new from what was shown in the past, and also new this year would be a scalable Super Hi-Vision downconversion system and newly designed camera lenses.

Although Matani estimated that the realization of Super Hi-Vision broadcast services would not happen until the mid-2020s, the system is now being used in one of Japan's National Museums.

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NHK will also show two distinct, functioning 3D/stereoscopic technologies, a working stereoscopic HD system that requires glasses and a new SD system that does not require glasses. The 3D HDTV system uses two HD liquid crystal projectors, and the HD 3D images this year are from Japan's KAGUYA lunar orbiter.

The new glasses-free 3D system is called "Integral 3D," and its resolution is well below HD, says Mitani. The display will feature different programming than the HD 3D demonstration.

Mitani said the HD system is a practical system today, but the Integral technology is still at a very early stage of development.

Also on display in the NHK Pavilion will be Japan's 1seg broadcasting for mobile devices, the part of the ISDB-T system for broadcasting to handheld devices. Japan's digital terrestrial broadcasting standard (ISDB-T) uses 12 of the 13 segments in each channel to provide service for home viewers and one segment (1seg) to serve mobile viewing platforms.

The demos of the 1seg system will include receivers, a 1seg retransmission system for underground reception, and a 1seg receiver emergency activation system.

NHK STRL, along with Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), has been named a winner of the NAB Technology Innovation Awards.