After 53 years as an engineer for Zenith and LG, Wayne Luplow has informed his colleagues he will retire in January.
Luplow has agreed to serve as a consultant going to Zenith and LG going forward and will stay involved in the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), representing the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) on the ATSC board of directors in 2018.
Luplow is best known for his longtime leadership in digital television technology and standards work. His five decades of experience span the transitions from black-and-white to color TV, monophonic to stereo TV, standard-definition to HDTV, analog to digital TV, and now to 4K and the next-generation ATSC 3.0 TV format.
For three decades, he has been involved with numerous ATSC activities and its board of directors, and he served as chairman of the ATSC Board in 2010. He has chaired the Consumer Technology Association’s (CTA) R4.0 Video Systems Committee since 1998, and has been active in the CTA Video Division Board, TV Manufacturers Caucus and Government Affairs Council, among many others.
Luplow is a Life-Fellow of the IEEE, an elected member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society and has also served on the Administrative Committee of the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society. He served for more than 30 years as editor in chief of the IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics.
He started at Zenith as a research engineer in 1964 and held many key technology positions over the years. Among many other responsibilities, Luplow was Zenith’s primary technical representative for the Digital HDTV Grand Alliance research consortium, and led Zenith’s HDTV research program, including development of the original Digital Spectrum Compatible HDTV system. In recent years, he has made major contributions primarily to developments related to ATSC 3.0 Next Gen TV and AWARN emergency alerting.
In an internal memo, Zenith said it “has benefited significantly for many years from Wayne’s leadership in key industry organizations, including the ATSC, the Consumer Technology Association and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.”
Jong G. Kim, president of the Zenith R&D Lab, commented: “I have been honored to know Wayne for more than two decades, both as a strong advocate for our company and as my friend. I know I can count on the entire Zenith team to support Wayne in his consulting role going forward. And please join me in thanking Wayne for his many many contributions to Zenith and our industry.”
