Vision - July/August 2008 - (Page 30)

tech speAk defining the digital world ] • [ by murray slovick Imagezoo/Getty Images standard enables telcos and ISPs to deliver high-quality video and television over digital subscriber lines (DSL), creating new revenue-generating opportunities. The advantage that telcos have in video distribution is because they are starting fresh with video, they can go straight to bandwidth-efficient video codecs such as H.264, rather than use MPEG-2 for delivery of live broadcasts and video-ondemand (VOD). H.264 cuts the bandwidth requirement for digital video delivery in half. Looked at another way, for a set-top box with PVR functionality, transcoding MPEG-2 content to H.264 potentially can boost storage capacity by 50 percent. MPEG-4 in Camcorders Turning to camcorders, the tiny (4.17 x 2.16 x 1.25-inch) Flip Video point-andshoot camcorder developed by Pure Digital Technologies records video in MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile format, which then is saved as an AVI file. With VGA resolution of 640 × 480 at a video frame rate of 30 frames per second (fps) it can store 30 minutes (1 Gb) or one hour (2 Gb) of video. Nearly one million Flip camcorders have been sold since its debut in May 2007. Stepping up a notch in complexity, Sanyo’s Xacti CG9 is a new flash-based MPEG-4 camcorder that also can take 9-megapixel still images. The CG9 has a bunch of other goodies: using the H.264 codec, it records VGA (at 60 fps) video and comes with a 5x optical zoom, 2.5-inch LCD, face detection, capable of recognizing as many as 12 faces in still images, and image stabilization. It accepts SDHC memory cards and has 40 MB of internal memory. Cable and Satellite Delivery W A Quiet Revolution hile there are no longer headlines when new MPEG-4/H.264 video compression products come to market, engineers looking to apply it in their designs of set-top boxes, PVRs and camcorders are about as eager as a dog outside a butcher shop. For the uninitiated, H.264, alternately known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), is a digital video codec, or compression-decompression algorithm. For a more detailed explanation, set the way-back machine to May/June 2007 and look at my previous CE Vision column on the subject (page 38). For current purposes, suffice it to say that different compression formats provide trade-offs in video quality versus file size and what H.264 does better than its predecessors is to more efficiently utilize bandwidth because its file size is smaller than MPEG-2. Conservation of limited bandwidth resources has become a critical requirement in the cable, satellite and telecom industry, especially as distribution of HD content becomes the norm. The H.264 Unlike the telcos, cable and satellite providers carry some baggage in that they still offer a large amount of MPEG-2 HD— requiring about 20 Mbps of bandwidth for each HD channel. Satellite-based content delivery services know that making the switch to MPEG-4 is the smart choice What’s Next? and they are using MPEG-4 receivers in One harbinger of exciting things to come was their efforts to offer more HD channels the recent NHK demonstration of “Ultra HD” than cable. satellite broadcasting in Tokyo, which utilized DirecTV, for instance, is deploying Kyrion H.264 technology from ATEME, a MPEG 4-based multiplexing and French developer of MPEG-4 video video compression technology compression solutions. Ultra HD is to add more local TV services in an experimental digital video format selected cities across the country. with a resolution of 7,680 × 4,320 The company has implemented pixels, or four times as wide and Motorola encoders in seven cities four times as high (for a total of 16 to receive signals from local TV statimes the pixel resolution) as existing tions. Each encoder features a ter- Murray Slovick HDTV. H.264 was essential because restrial receiver so that TV signals Ultra HD broadcasting consumes a are received and converted to MPEG-4 in tremendous amount of bandwidth. a single unit. According to NHK, 18 minutes of uncomCable, too, is looking to make the switch to pressed Ultra HD footage consumes 3.5 help solve their bandwidth woes, but indus- terabytes (one trillion bytes) of data. The try analysts expect its roll-out will take lon- demonstration relied on 16 synchronized ger, although progress is being made. At the ATEME Kyrion units to encode the Ultra 2008 International CES, Motorola show- HD video into an H.264 bitstream, allowcased its first MPEG-4 set-top boxes for ing the broadcast to operate over a stanthe cable industry. The DCX series enables dard satellite uplink. on-demand and interactive digital programH.264 applications are just starting to ming for the home and is aimed at enabling explode onto the market. Look for new cable companies to effectively manage the applications to debut at SINOCES this transition from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 while July in China and more innovations at at the same time meeting growing consumer the 2009 International CES in January demand for HD content. in Las Vegas. • www.ce.org 30 July/August 2008 http://www.ce.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Vision - July/August 2008

Vision - July/August 2008 Contents Shapiro's Spectrum In This Issue The Economist C4 Trends Visionary Embracing Disrupting Technology Vaulting Ahead with Your Brand International Risk Stop Boomerang Products CEA Newsline Tech Speak Tech Policy Going Global Eye on Business Market Insider Just the Stats

Vision - July/August 2008

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