Town Hall

Hans Hoffmann was born in Munich, Germany. He holds a diploma in telecommunication engineering from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich. In 2007, he completed his Ph.D. studies at Brunel University West London, at the School of Engineering and Design. From 1993 to 2000, Hoffmann worked at the Insitut fuer Rundfunktechnik in research and development for new television production technologies. In 2000, he joined the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) as a senior engineer in the technical department. Hoffmann has chaired the EBU project groups P/BRRTV and P/PITV, which were both involved in standardization activities such SDTI and file formats. He has chaired the SMPTE technology committee on Networks and File Management and has served as Engineering Director, Television. He has been involved in EBU activities on high-definition television production and emission and set up the HDTV testing laboratory at the EBU. Hoffmann is a fellow of SMPTE and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), FKT (Germany), and the Society for Information Display (SID).

As Technology Vice President in the CTO Office at Dolby, Patrick Griffis is charged with helping define future technology strategy for the company which includes identifying and tracking key technical trends, performing technical due diligence, and supporting advanced technology initiatives for the company. He has been an active company spokesperson on the topic of next generation imaging and in particular, “better pixels” - a term he coined for High Dynamic Range plus Wide Color Gamut. Before joining Dolby, Pat spent 10 years at Microsoft leading global digital media standards strategy, including adoption of the Digital Living Network Alliance as a baseline media sharing standard in Windows 7 and standardization of Windows Media Video technology as an international SMPTE standard. Prior to Microsoft, Pat spent 15 years at Panasonic in senior management positions, including Vice President of Strategic Product Development at Panasonic Broadcast where he drove Panasonic’s HDTV strategy for the US. Pat started his career at RCA, earning eight patents in TV product design.