Victorian company wins an Emmy

When the Emmy awards are mentioned, most people think of the most popular television celebrities, not a company in the outer suburbs of Melbourne.

Last week, Australian company Radio Frequency Systems Australia – based in the Melbourne suburb of Kilsyth near Mount Dandenong – won an Emmy for its “adjacent channel combiner” technology.

The technology, which helps television broadcasters make the switch from analogue to digital signals with less difficulty, won the award in the less prestigious technology and engineering category.

Analogue television signals will switch to digital in 2013, but until then the two networks must exist together. This has caused problems for Australian broadcasters.

“The problem the TV networks have got is having to build a new tower so they can run analogue and digital at the same time,” RFS marketing director Peter Walters told The Age.

“That means you’d have extra towers up on Mount Dandenong, which is obviously a problem aesthetically and cost-wise. This new technology allows digital TV to be added to that tower instead of having to build new towers.”