Technology Expert Profile

James T. Whittlesey

Senior Hardware Engineer, Grass Valley Group

James Whittlesey is a senior hardware engineer at the Beaverton Design Center for the Grass Valley Group, working on digital cinema requirements for the company's Profile XP product line.

A member of the Grass Valley Group since the company acquired Tektronix Inc.'s Video and Networking Division (VND), Whittlesey was instrumental in designing the standard-definition, two-channel MPEG encoder board for the company's Profile XP Media Platform. As part of VND, he worked on the original Profile video disk server prototype, designing the MPEG codec, SCSI disk interface, and real-time processor.

Whittlesey previously worked with Tektronix Inc.'s Printer Division for five years, designing ASICs to control all electro-mechanical functions of the Tektronix Phase Change Print engine. He also worked with Tektronix Inc.'s Computer Graphics Division for seven years, designing 2D graphic processors and developing graphics algorithms for bit slice processors.

Whittlesey holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University and an MBA from Portland State University. He is a member of SMPTE and participates in the three study groups on digital cinema: audio, projection and theatre systems.

In addition to digital cinema research and development, Whittlesey is currently working on code for the Profile XP Media Platform's HD encoder design.