MUMBAI: Tandberg Television said that it was playing a key role in the world's first transmission of live high definition (HD) video from the sea floor.

Tandberg Television technology, supplied through Heartland Video Systems, is an integral part of the delivery of three-dimensional views of ocean and seafloor environments, transmitted in real time to shore and over the Internet by ResearchChannel.

The technology is being used for the Vision '05 research expedition to the underwater volcanoes of the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the northeast Pacific Ocean. The expedition attempts to brings the extreme life forms and geologic activity of the seafloor to viewers on land, states an official release.

Using Tandberg Television's HD encoder and decoder, the high definition video was compressed and transmitted live from the research vessel over IP satellite to the University of Washington, where it was streamed over the Internet to research facilities across the United States. The seafloor locations are located about 200 miles offshore and HD video links reached 20Mbit/s. The live images of deep-sea volcano research are provided with the highest visual fidelity currently possible using a satellite link, and are available to computer and ocean scientists, engineers, students, and the general public, the release adds.

The live transmission from the VISIONS '05 research expedition can be viewed at http://www.researchchannel.org/visions05/.