MMediaTech

Quarterly TV report

2012-01-28T14:47:00.000+01:00

DisplaySearch released the new Quarterly TV Design and Features Report.

The report finds that North American consumers favor large, inexpensive TV sets with fewer features, unlike other regions. Chinese consumers are enthusiastic about richly-featured sets with 3D, LED backlighting and smart TV capabilities.

The report uniquely forecasts the prospects for DVB-T2 reception in TV. It finds that a critical mass of countries have now adopted or committed to DVB-T2. Shipments of DVB-T2-enabled sets are expected to grow from 3.4 million in 2011 to 64.7 million in 2015.

Source: Display Search.

iPhone 3DUI

2012-01-18T12:01:00.000+01:00

Apple Insider reports that Apple has shown interest in developing a new user interface for the iPhone that relies less on the device's touchscreen, and more on manipulating a 3D environment with motion controls.

Apple could remove the need to touch the screen entirely by using orientation data from onboard sensors to determine a "perspective projection of the 3D display environment." Examples of this kind of interaction can be seen with augmented reality applications, or using the gyroscope to view a location with Google Street View in the iOS Maps application.

France Telecom sells Orange Switzerland

2011-12-24T15:12:00.002+01:00

France Telecom SA agreed to sell its Orange Switzerland mobile-phone unit to buyout firm Apax Partners LLP for 1.6 billion euros ($2.1 billion), the first major step in Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard’s plan to unload slow-growing European operations.

France Telecom is shedding assets in Europe, where phone companies are vying for a shrinking pool of new customers amid tightening regulation, to embrace faster-growing markets in Africa and the Middle East.

France’s largest mobile operator is also in talks to sell its Orange Austria unit to Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., people familiar with the situation said in October, and is planning to exit Portugal.

Source: Businessweek.

27% of photos and videos now captured on smartphones

2011-12-23T21:17:00.000+01:00

More than a quarter of photos and videos shot by individuals in the U.S. are now being captured by smartphones, according to an online survey of 3,300 Internet users ages 13 and up. Sales data suggest smartphones are replacing consumers’ need for low-end point-and-shoot cameras and camcorders.

The percentage of photos taken with a smartphone went from 17% to 27%, a 44% increase from the year previous, according to a survey conducted by NPD Group. Meanwhile, sales of point-and-shoot cameras dropped 17% in volume and 18% in revenue in the first 11 months of 2011. Individual sales of pocket camcorders dropped 13%, with a 10% decrease in revenue.

Source: Mashable Tech.

Microsoft acquires VideoSurf

2011-11-24T11:36:00.000+01:00

“VideoSurf’s content analytics technology will enhance the search and discovery of entertainment content across our platform,” said Alex Garden, director of Xbox LIVE for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft. “This holiday we will launch voice search across our entertainment partners on Xbox LIVE. Over time, as we integrate VideoSurf’s technology into our system, we are excited about the potential to have content tagged in real time to increase the speed and relevance of the search results.”

Source: Microsoft.

Online video revenues to triple

2011-11-23T17:34:00.001+01:00

Consumption of legitimate free and paid for online video is on track to exceed 770 billion views across the USA, UK, France and Germany this year, according to a new report from Futuresource Consulting. Improvements in accessibility and ease of use are among the growth triggers that have seen the rise from around 640 billion views last year, with the USA dominating the market.

“Total online video views are on track to grow by 20 per cent and paid-for online video revenues will reach in excess of $3 billion this year,” advised Mai Hoang, Senior Analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “Online purchase and rental transactions are playing a part, but the majority of this revenue is coming out of the USA, predominantly through streaming subscription service Netflix. By 2015, paid-for online video spend is forecast to hit close to $7 billion across the four countries.”

Source: Advanced Television.

Video conferencing will hit $1bn in 2016

2011-11-17T21:51:00.000+01:00

Businesses are increasingly adopting enterprise-grade telepresence. The market will boom, with spending hitting $1.1bn in 2016, growing with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5% from 2011 to 2016, finds Ovum.

The explosive growth of the telepresence market means many companies new to the technology will soon be making large purchasing decisions. In a new report, the independent telecoms analysis firm explores the competitive dynamics within that telepresence market.

Source: Ovum.

Video Codecs 101

2011-11-16T20:56:00.000+01:00

The guys at WebM Open Media Project have realized a very nice video that explains the basic concepts of video compression to non-expert people: very worth watching!

Read the original post on the WebM blog.

Gartner's Q3 2011 smartphone figures

2011-11-15T17:10:00.000+01:00

Source: engadget.

ITU-T spots trends in gaming

2011-11-11T19:20:00.000+01:00

The latest report from the ITU-T Technology Watch series surveys some of the hottest developments in the world of video games, describes the most common gaming platforms and terminals, highlights new technologies enabling a better gaming experience, and identifies future standardization activities.

Consumers are beginning to struggle with the ever-increasing number of set top-boxes, satellite receivers and gaming consoles. It is a logical and certainly desirable goal to integrate these closely related technologies on to a multipurpose, standards-based multimedia platform. Incorporating a variety of audiovisual technologies into a single 3D TV device is understandably a task demanding a great degree of standardization work. ITU will bring together service and content providers, including games developers, to attempt to standardize communication protocols, toolboxes, middleware and security frameworks.

Source: ITU-T newslog.

Kodak sells image sensor business

2011-11-10T21:10:00.000+01:00

Eastman Kodak Company announced that it has completed the sale of its Image Sensor Solutions (ISS) business to Platinum Equity, a global firm specializing in the merger, acquisition and operation of companies that provide services and solutions to customers in a broad range of business markets.

While the financial details were not disclosed, Kodak will have continuing access to the image sensor technology involved in this transaction for use in its own products. Included in the sale is a 263,000 square foot facility in Eastman Business Park in Rochester, N.Y., that houses manufacturing and research facilities.

Source: Kodak.

Adobe to refocus on HTML5

2011-11-09T21:12:00.000+01:00

Official declarations released by Adobe in a blog post:

HTML5 the best solution for creating and deploying content in the browser across mobile platforms. We are excited about this, and will continue our work with key players in the HTML community, including Google, Apple, Microsoft and RIM, to drive HTML5 innovation they can use to advance their mobile browsers.
We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.

A fifth of TV sets will be internet-connected by 2016

2011-11-08T21:35:00.002+01:00

The number of TV sets connected to the Internet will reach 551 million by 2016 for the 40 countries covered in a new report from Digital TV Research.

The Connected TV Forecasts report states that this translates to 20% of global TV sets by 2016, up from 6% at end-2010. South Korea leads take up with a forecasted 15.0% penetration in 2016.

Source: Digital TV Group.

Disney and YouTube make a video deal

2011-11-08T21:30:00.000+01:00

Disney Interactive Media and YouTube, a division of Google, will spend a combined $10 million to $15 million on original video series; those shorts will be produced by Disney and distributed on a co-branded channel on Disney.com and YouTube. The channel will also include amateur video culled from the torrent uploaded to YouTube daily.

The Disney-YouTube partnership follows YouTube’s announcement late last month that it planned to create dozens of channels featuring comedians, sports stars, musicians and other entertainers. It is also offering cash advances to prospective producers that totaled more than $100 million, according to people with knowledge of the plan but who were not authorized to speak publicly. The investments in the channels reflect Google’s belief that the Internet is the third phase of the television business, after network TV (with a few channels) and cable TV (with hundreds).

Source: The New York Times.

Rapid 3D mapping

2011-10-30T12:31:00.001+01:00

9to5Mac reports that Apple is now the owner of C3 Technologies, a company that creates incredibly high-quality and detailed 3D maps with virtually no input from humans. The 3D mapping is camera based and the technology picks up buildings, homes, and even smaller objects like trees. C3′s solution comes from declassified missile targeting methods. SAAB, partially a former owner of C3 Technologies has a video that explains how the technology actually works.

Flash Player 11

2011-10-21T23:21:00.001+02:00

The new release of the popular Adobe Flash Player added quite some interesting features.

Stage 3D Accelerated Graphics Rendering (Player & AIR desktop + AIR for TV) — Stage 3D is a new architecture for hardware accelerated graphics rendering developed that provides a set of low-level APIs that enable advanced 2D and 3D rendering capabilities across screens and devices (desktop, mobile, and TV). Using Stage 3D, app and framework developers can now access high performance GPU hardware acceleration, enabling the creation of new classes of rich, interactive experiences. Note: Stage 3D for mobile versions of Flash Player & AIR will be enabled in a future release.

Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) — Protected HTTP Dynamic Streaming (HDS) provides protection for streaming video across screens while eliminating the deployment complexity of a license server.

H.264/AVC Software Encoding for Cameras (desktop) — Stream high-quality video from your computer's camera with higher compression efficiency and industry stanard support, enabling both immersive real-time communications such as video chat/conferencing and live video broadcasts.

JPEG-XR support — Flash Player and AIR now include support for the JPEG-XR advanced image compression standard (International Standard ISO/IEC 29199-2). The computationally lightweight JPEG-XR format provides more efficient compression than JPEG, enables both lossy and lossless compression support, and adds support for alpha channel transparency.

Dennis Ritchie passes away

2011-10-13T23:09:00.001+02:00

After a long illness, Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, father of Unix and an esteemed computer scientist, died last weekend at the age of 70.

Ritchie, also known as “dmr”, is best know for creating the C programming language as well as being instrumental in the development of UNIX along with Ken Thompson.

Today, C remains the second most popular programming language in the world (or at least the language in which the second most lines of code have been written), and ushered in C++ and Java; while the pair’s work on Unix led to, among other things, Linus Torvalds’ Linux. The work has without a doubt made Ritchie one of the most important, if not under-recognized, engineers of the modern era.

His work, specifically in relation to UNIX, led to him becoming a joint recipient of the Turing Award with Ken Thompson in 1983, as well as a recipient of the National Medal of Technology in 1998 from then-president Bill Clinton.

Source: techcrunch.

Thank you, Steve

2011-10-06T19:33:00.000+02:00

Smart TV standard

2011-09-08T22:46:00.000+02:00

LG, Philips and Sharp have agreed to work together to define common technical requirements for their Smart TVs, based upon open standards such as HTML5, CE-HTML and HbbTV. The group's first step will be to introduce the first beta version of a common Software Development Kit (SDK), which highlights the need to define the technical requirements that would allow content developers to create a single application that can run on Smart TVs from LG, Philips and Sharp Aquos Net+.

The beta version of the common SDK will be released in early October.

Home Video Business in H1 2011

2011-08-30T22:56:00.000+02:00

Some facts according to a report compiled by DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group.

For the six months that ended June 30, total consumer spending on home entertainment fell 5% from spending in the first half of 2010, to $8.34 billion from $8.78 billion.
Disc sales were off 16.3% in the second quarter of 2011, to $1.8 billion from $2.15 billion, while electronic sellthrough was down 2.17%, to $129.75 million from $132.63 million in the second quarter of 2010.
For the first half, consumers spent $4.2 billion on transactional video — disc rental, streaming and VOD — which is nearly 11% more than they spent in the first six months of 2010.
Rental revenue fell 29% in the second quarter after dropping 26.9% in the first quarter, leaving total year-to-date spending as of June 30 at $896.5 million, down from $1.24 billion in the first six months of 2010.
Subcription rental, chiefly from Netflix, rose 45.7% in the first six months of this year, to $1.56 billion from $1.07 billion in the first six months of 2010, although year-to-year numbers are somewhat skewed by the fact that for much of the period Netflix offered a combination disc-and-streaming package to its subscribers.

Source: Home Media Magazine.

Layar Vision

2011-08-22T18:17:00.003+02:00

Layar Vision is an extension of the Layar platform, taking augmented reality to the next level by allowing the creation of layers and applications that recognize real world objects and display digital experiences on top of them.

Layar Vision uses computer vision techniques to augment objects in the physical world. It can tell which objects in the real world are augmented because the visual fingerprints of the objects are preloaded into the application based on the user’s layer selection.

MPEG LA found essential WebM patents

2011-07-30T12:23:00.002+02:00

MPEG LA says 12 parties hold patents that its evaluators consider essential to the VP8 video codec by Google's WebM project. The disclosure came in a recent interview with StreamingMedia.com. MPEG LA says that, in response to their call for essential patents in February, a number of parties submitted patents for evaluation and twelve of those parties' patents have been examined and found to be essential to VP8.

Quoting MPEG LA from streamingmedia.com:

Thus far, 12 parties have been found to have patents essential to the VP8 standard. Generally, parties may submit patents for evaluation of essentiality to VP8 at any time during the process of facilitating a patent pool, and may continue to do so after the pool launches, assuming one is formed.

Once a pool license is created, it typically remains open for the inclusion of additional essential patents, and patent holders with essential patents are welcome to join the license as Licensors. MPEG LA met with VP8 essential patent holders in late June to facilitate a discussion among them whether and on what terms they may want to create a VP8 patent pool license and is continuing to facilitate that discussion.

Mozilla against WebP

2011-05-25T23:12:00.001+02:00

In a bugzilla entry asking for the incorporation of WebP, Mozilla developer Joe Drew said in a comment "As the WebP image format exists currently, I won't accept a patch for it". Readers were directed to a blog posting by Jeff Muizelaar for the rationale for the rejection. He explained that Mozilla is unhappy with the quality versus size claims made by Google for WebP and questioned the methodology used to test: this converted existing JPEG images into WebP images and then compared quality using PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and file size.

A month after Muizelaar made these comments, Google released a new study which used PNG images as source and compared quality using SSIM (Structural Similarity). This new study showed WebP images to be on average 25%-34% smaller than similar quality JPEGs, but the quality value is calculated and there is some discussion over whether WebP imagery is perceived by the untrained eye to be of the same quality.

Source: H online.

Real-time entertainment traffic

2011-05-19T22:08:00.006+02:00

The last report by Sandvine says that -in North America- Netflix accounts for 30% of traffic during prime time, and 22.2% of daily internet traffic. Sandvine gets the data from ISPs using its broadband technology and now foresees "Real-Time Entertainment" (which includes Netflix) shooting up over 55% of peak internet traffic by the end of this year.

Sandive also reported that in Europe, Real-Time Entertainment continues a steady climb, rising to 33.2% of peak aggregate traffic, up from 31.9% last fall. BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocol, is the largest single component of both upstream (59.7%) and downstream (21.6%) Internet traffic during peak periods. In the UK, BBC's iPlayer is 6.6% of peak downstream traffic, reflecting the demand for localized content in many markets. Overall, individual subscribers in Europe consume twice the amount of data as North Americans.

Source: Engadget.

Microsoft to acquire Skype

2011-05-10T21:24:00.000+02:00

Microsoft Corp. agreed to buy Internet phone company Skype Technologies SA for $8.5 billion in cash — the most aggressive move yet by Microsoft to play in the increasingly converged worlds of communication, information and entertainment. The deal will let Microsoft "be more ambitious, do more things," Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in an interview.

Skype will become a new business division within Microsoft, and Skype Chief Executive Mr. Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Mr. Ballmer.

The Skype deal ranks as the biggest acquisition in the 36-year history of Microsoft, a company that traditionally has shied away from large deals. In 2007, Microsoft paid approximately $6 billion to acquire online advertising firm aQuantive Inc. Many current and former Microsoft executives believe Microsoft significantly overpaid for that deal. But they are also relieved that Microsoft gave up on an unsolicited $48 billion offer for Yahoo Inc. nearly three years ago. Yahoo is valued at half that sum today.

Source: Wall Street Journal.

Texas Instruments to acquire National Semiconductor

2011-04-11T21:35:00.000+02:00

Texas Instruments Inc. signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire National Semiconductor Corp. for $6.5 billion in cash, the company said Monday April 4.

The deal, which remains subject to regulatory review and the approval of National's shareholders, would bring together two of the longest-running semiconductor companies and two of the largest vendors of analog chips.

TI ranked No. 4 in the world in overall semiconductor sales in 2010 with revenue of $11.9 billion. The addition of National's revenue would have made TI the No. 3 chip vendor in 2010, ahead of Toshiba and trailing only Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., according to Gartner. National had revenue of $1.42 billion in its fiscal 2010.

Multimedia Grand Challenge 2011

2011-04-09T18:47:00.004+02:00

What problems do Yahoo, HP, Nokia, Technicolor, 3DLife and other companies see in the future of multimedia? The Multimedia Grand Challenge is a set of problems from industry leaders, geared to engage the Multimedia research community in solving relevant, interesting and challenging questions about the industry’s 2-5 year horizon for multimedia.

2011 Challenges are the following:

Winners of the competition will be announced at the ACM Multimedia Conference 2011 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

DVB-3DTV Specification Published

2011-04-01T21:25:00.001+02:00

On February 17 the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Steering Board approved the DVB-3DTV specification, which has been published as BlueBook A154 "Frame Compatible Plano-Stereoscopic 3DTV".

Plano-stereoscopic imaging systems deliver two images (left and right) that are arranged to be seen simultaneously, or near simultaneously, by the left and right eyes. Viewers perceive increased depth in the picture, which becomes more like the natural binocular viewing experience.

The DVB-3DTV specification also provides a mechanism that allows subtitles and other onscreen graphics to be best positioned so that they can be viewed correctly in the stereoscopic picture.

Following the recent approval and publication of the DVB-3DTV specification, a free EBU Technical Webinar will be held on April 14th with David Wood, live from the NAB Convention in Las Vegas, and Yvonne Thomas, live from the EBU Headquarters in Geneva. You can register and join the 3DTV Webinar from the website of EBU Technical.

Source: DVB press release and DVB news.

H.264/AVC vs. VP8: another view

2011-03-31T20:33:00.001+02:00

The EBU BroadThinking event has been held in Geneva (CH), between 29 and 30 March. This year we have contributed to the session "What are tomorrow's web tools?" with a presentation entitled "H.264/AVC and VP8 performance analysis for consumer videoconference applications", as you can find here. The slides are available for download from here in pdf format, but only for the people registered on the EBU website.

Update (Apr.13th): the presentation is now available through Slideshare.

Let me copy&paste the abstract here for your convenience:

In this contribution we compare the performance of H.264/AVC and VP8 video coding formats for consumer videoconference applications for mobile or consumer terminals. For the H.264/AVC format we chose the popular x264 open source implementation of the standard, whereas for VP8 we used the libvpx software model that Google open sourced to the web community in May 2010. Since videoconference is strictly a low-delay application, both encoders were similarly configured avoiding backward temporal prediction that would introduce a structural delay in the encoding-decoding chain, and they were also set in constant bit-rate mode, using single-pass bit-rate control with target bit-rates between 512 kb/s and 8 Mb/s, constraining the allowed delay between 125 ms and 500 ms by properly limiting the maximum output buffer capacity.

Our test bed was not limited to evaluating video compression only, as in fact we considered the full video processing chain, including image acquisition. For this purpose we used a proprietary analytical model of a typical CMOS sensor, introducing the corresponding distortion and noise to 7 standard test sequences at 1280x720 spatial resolution. The sequences were then fed as input to the two software encoders, and then the decoded pictures were compared to the noisy source signals considering both PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) and SSIM (Structural Similarity) measured on the luminance component. The simulation results demonstrated that the H.264/AVC and VP8 encoders have very similar performance: libvpx resulted somewhat better than x264 in term of PSNR (+0.16 dB on average) and very slightly worse in terms of SSIM (-0.005 on average).

We would also like to compare the commercial implications of the two codecs, (royalties vs. Open source), and public visibility on reciprocal road mapping.

VP8 hardware encoder

2011-03-15T13:44:00.000+01:00

Last week the WebM Finland team finalized the first VP8 encoder hardware RTL design. The initial release, which they're calling "Anthill," is now available through the WebM Project hardware page.

Google does not require payment of any license fee or royalty in connection with use of the encoder RTL.

See the WebM blog for details about performance.

Warner to offer movies via Facebook

2011-03-09T21:55:00.001+01:00

Warner Bros. Entertainment said it will start renting movies via Facebook, the latest effort by movie studios to find new revenue sources as consumers buy fewer DVDs and spend more time online. The first movie on offer is "The Dark Knight" the 2008 hit Batman movie. Warner's president of digital distribution, Thomas Gewecke, said the studio chose "The Dark Knight" as its launch title largely because it has already been "liked" by 3.9 million Facebook users.

The Wall Street Journal tells that studios can no longer count on DVD sales and are experimenting with new ways of earning revenue online. Last year, U.S. sales of DVDs totaled $7.8 billion, down 43% from their 2006 peak of $13.7 billion, according to media-tracking firm IHS Screen Digest. From 2009 to 2010 alone sales of the discs plunged roughly 20%.

See "The Dark Kinght" on Facebook.

Microsoft to release Kinect SDK

2011-03-08T20:46:00.000+01:00

Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, and Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, announced that the company plans to release a non-commercial Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) from Microsoft Research this spring.

While Microsoft plans to release a commercial version at a later date, this SDK will be a starter kit to make it simpler for the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich natural user interfaces using Kinect technology. The SDK will give users access to deep Kinect system information such as audio, system application-programming interfaces, and direct control of the Kinect sensor.

Source: Microsoft Research.

Antitrust probe to MPEG LA

2011-03-06T23:32:00.000+01:00

The Justice Department is investigating whether a group representing some top technology firms is unfairly trying to smother a free rival technology for delivering online video that is backed by Google Inc.

According to The Wall Street Journal's sources, the problems stems from the MPEG-LA creating legal uncertainty over the status of Google's VP8. "Antitrust enforcers are investigating whether MPEG LA, or its members, are trying to cripple an alternative format called VP8 that Google released last year - by creating legal uncertainty over whether users might violate patents by employing that technology," the sources told the WSJ.

Skype to embrace H.264/AVC

2011-02-16T21:30:00.000+01:00

Skype is taking a big step toward its goal of making its video chat service ubiquitous across multiple platforms and devices, with the adoption of the H.264/AVC video format on iOS devices. In a blog post Wednesday, Skype Blogger-in-Chief Peter Parkes wrote that the change will allow Skype’s iPhone users to chat with friends on TVs and other connected devices.

Source: The New York Times.

MPEG LA calls for VP8 patents

2011-02-11T21:32:00.000+01:00

MPEG LA, LLC, world leader in alternative one-stop patent licenses, announces a call for patents essential to the VP8 video codec specification used to deliver video images. The VP8 video codec is defined by the WebM Project.

In order to participate in the creation of, and determine licensing terms for, a joint VP8 patent license, any party that believes it has patents that are essential to the VP8 video codec specification is invited to submit them for a determination of their essentiality by MPEG LA’s patent evaluators.

At least one essential patent is necessary to participate in the process, and initial submissions should be made by March 18, 2011.

A closer look to H.264/AVC costs

2011-01-31T18:04:00.000+01:00

« I read license agreements so that you don’t have to. In an update on its decision to remove H.264 support from its Chrome browser, Google cites “significant royalties” as a contributing factor. Just how much are those fees, and who pays? I’ve got the answers. »

Continue reading on ZDNet.

New Sony PSP announced

2011-01-27T20:10:00.001+01:00

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. has announced its next-generation portable entertainment system (codenamed NGP) will be run on a four-core Cortex-A9 processor from ARM and a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ graphics core from Imagination Technologies. NGP will make its debut at the end of the year 2011, Sony said.

Source: EETimes.

Korea demonstrates LTE-Advanced

2011-01-26T21:16:00.000+01:00

Korean researchers at Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) successfully demonstrated Long Term Evolution LTE-Advanced technology, which is six times faster than the upcoming LTE network or 40 times faster than a 3G network with a maximum speed of 600 Mb/s for downloading.

ETRI expects LTE-Advanced to become available in the country by 2014, and plans to create a single-chip of the demonstration system within three years.

Source: Telecoms Korea.

WebM Decoder in Flash

2011-01-14T21:19:00.000+01:00

Ralph Hauwert has been posting on Twitter about work he’s doing on getting WebM decoding to work in Flash by compiling the libvpx source code using Adobe’s Alchemy technology, a research project that allows compilation of C/C++ libraries into code that runs on the ActionScript virtual machine used by Flash.

The intial performance of a 1920x1080 VP8 video with no audio was decoding to YUV at about 1.5 frames per second.

See the Bluish Coder blog.

Google removes H.264/AVC from Chrome

2011-01-12T21:23:00.000+01:00

In a few days, Google's Chrome browser will not support natively H.264/AVC video decoding anymore.

Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager of the Chromium project, wrote yesterday that "Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies".

New 3D TV services

2011-01-11T21:31:00.002+01:00

The world’s first terrestrial 3D TV broadcast service has officially gone live in following a successful trial by Italian broadcaster Mediaset. The service, known as 3VOD, runs on Motive’s Bestv set top box, offers subscribers the ability to view films from a selection of around 50 titles. It was originally offered as a limited trial to subscribers from late last year.

At the same time, Vudu announced that 3D content is now available in world's first 3D streaming service. Pricing varies by resolution, but you'll be looking at $5.99 for a 720p rental and $6.99 for a 1080p rental. That's higher by their normal $4.99 HD rental pricing, but not by much. To buy a film, you'll be paying $21.99 instead of $19.99. You can grab it in 1080p, 720p and standard definition. There are only three 3D titles available now, but more are on the way.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal and High-Def Digest.

VP8 hardware IP availability

2011-01-10T20:57:00.003+01:00

The WebM hardware development team, formerly part of On2 Technologies, announces:

VP8 (the video codec used in WebM) hardware decoder IP is available from Google for semiconductor companies who want to support high-quality WebM playback in their chipsets.

The Oulu team will release the first VP8 video hardware encoder IP in the first quarter of 2011. The IP is running in an FPGA environment, and rigorous testing is underway. Once all features have been tested and implemented, the encoder will be launched as well.

IBM's 5 in 5

2011-01-05T21:36:00.000+01:00

The annual IBM's "Five in Five" forecasts five innovations likely to be developed in the next five years. This year's predictions are:

"Citizen scientists" will collect real-time data about their environment using sensors in cars, phones or wallets, which can then be used by professional scientists for research.
Holograms will become commonplace. People will be able to interact with far-away friends in 3D, using something as commonplace as a cellphone.
Today's batteries will become obsolete. Cellphones may be powered by batteries that run on oxygen, and static or kinetic energy may eliminate batteries altogether for smaller devices.
Instead of wasting the massive amounts of energy needed to cool them, computer and data centers will recycle the heat energy the machines generate, potentially helping to power cities.
Adaptive traffic systems will personalize your commute, anticipating congestion and other issues to get you to work with a minimum of road rage.

Source: Los Angeles Times.

Minority Report interface with Kinect

2010-12-24T14:14:00.000+01:00

A member of the research staff at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has created a Minority Report interface using the Kinect 3D sensor and open source software. Not only does the device only cost $150, you can use it without any gloves. Garratt Gallagher, the interfaces’s creator, shows off some basic gesture controls in the video below.

Source: Singularity Hub.

Windows 7, Firefox and H.264/AVC

2010-12-17T20:05:00.001+01:00

Microsoft will release a plugin that allows Firefox to tap into Windows 7′s native H.264 support for HTML5 video. This will hopefully help streamline things on the web and get us moving all towards one standard format. However it mightn’t bode well with fans who want to make the move away from H.264.

Source: Windows 7 News.

3D HD STB SoC Solution

2010-12-15T17:29:00.001+01:00

Broadcom Corporation announced and is sampling a new dual high definition (HD) set-top box (STB) system-on-a-chip (SoC) video gateway solution with more than two times the performance over previous generations.

The BCM7422 is the industry's first SoC to combine a 1.3 GHz multi-threaded MIPS® processor with the latest transmission efficient H.264/MPEG Scalable Video Coding (SVC), and Multiview Video Coding(MVC) standards for enabling 1080p60/50 content distribution and full-resolution HD 3DTV.

Complementing this new level of application software and visual performance is a 1G pixel per second OpenGL® ES 2.0 3D GPU for advanced 3D graphics acceleration, as well as integrated whole-home connectivity functionality including MoCA® and DLNA® support.

Source: press release.

H.264/AVC surpasses MPEG-2

2010-12-10T16:41:00.001+01:00

ABI research reports that H.264/MPEG-4 AVC set-top box shipments surpassed MPEG-2-only set-top box shipments for the first time in 2010, with about 53% H.264/AVC shipments worldwide. Despite the support for advanced encoding, however, pay-TV operators worldwide have been slow to support interactive features on set-top boxes.

3-D models from online photo databases

2010-12-02T23:54:00.000+01:00

Italy first to broadcast backwards compatible 3D

2010-12-02T12:43:00.000+01:00

Italian viewers will be able to enjoy the free over-the-air content in 2D or 3D. A new format created by a partnership of both private and public parties in Italy created a new format they're calling 3D Tile, which integrates a pair of 720p frames into a single 1080p frame, allowing reconstructed images to maintain their original resolution. More importantly, it lets viewers with traditional 2D televisions watch 3D content.

Source: High-Def Digest.

Fortune names Netflix CEO businessperson of the year

2010-12-01T21:58:00.000+01:00

He beat out the likes of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Ford’s Alan Mulally. While Netflix is most famous for its DVDs-by-mail service, Reed Hastings has driven the company to new heights by charging hard into the streaming video space—“disrupting his own business before it gets disrupted,” writes Fortune. Netflix’s Watch Instantly service, which offers unlimited access to 17,000 movies and TV shows to Netfix’s 15 million subscribers, is already nearly ubiquitous, available anywhere from the browser to the Xbox to the iPhone. A recent study found that Netflix streaming accounts for 20% of peak Internet traffic.

H.264/AVC market growth

2010-11-16T09:55:00.000+01:00

Satellite set top boxes continue to be the largest market for H.264 decoder ICs. In addition more and more DTVs are using H.264 decoder ICs rather than only MPEG-2. As a result In-Stat expects H.264 decoder ICs to grow at an annual rate in excess of 20% through 2013.

“Advanced compression, such as H.264, is becoming increasingly popular due to its lower bit rate and smaller file size that especially helps networked video solutions,” says Michelle Abraham, Principal Analyst. “The proliferation of video applications, such as user generated content and online video streaming, embedded DVRs and mobile video are serving to increase demand for low cost, high-quality encoders.”

Source: press release.

The biggest entertainment launch ever

2010-11-13T11:53:00.001+01:00

Shattering its own day-one sales record, Activision Publishing, Inc. announced that Treyarch's highly-anticipated Call of Duty®: Black Ops has become the biggest entertainment launch ever with an estimated sell-through of approximately $360 million in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours of its release, as compared to last year's estimated day-one sell-through of $310 million for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare® 2 in North America and the United Kingdom, according to internal Activision estimates.

"Call of Duty: Black Ops", marks the second year in a row that the Call of Duty franchise has set day one launch records across all forms of entertainment. In its first day on November 9, the blockbuster title sold through approximately 5.6 million copies in North America and the United Kingdom, as compared to 4.7 million copies for last year's "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2", according to internal Activision estimates.

Microsoft and Polycom join forces with SVC

2010-11-12T20:59:00.004+01:00

Microsoft is among the first companies to announce its intention to adopt Polycom's H.264 SVC technology, furthering the recently announced strategic relationship between the two companies to deliver and market integrated Unified Communications (UC) solutions.

"Microsoft and Polycom are committed to support open, interoperable UC solutions," said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president, Office Business Productivity Marketing Group, Microsoft. "Video collaboration can help improve customer productivity and lower costs. By integrating H.264 SVC technology within our broader solution offering, Microsoft and Polycom can make it easier for millions of people to leverage video communications within familiar Microsoft applications."

Read the press release and watch the video.

World of Warcraft coming to Google TV

2010-11-04T21:50:00.002+01:00

Cloud gaming on your Internet connected TV just got a step closer with Blizzard's popular World of Warcraft coming to Google TV.

GameString Adrenalin offers what it calls "Personal Cloud Gaming", letting you stream the output from seemingly any game on your PC to a browser, where it can be played on a number of devices.

Adrenalin is optimized to let users remotely play the 3D games installed on their home PC through a web browser. Users can webcast games to others and can allow remote users to play by giving them control of the game.

Sources: App Market, Engadget, The Inquirer.

VP8 Aylesbury

2010-10-29T21:36:00.001+02:00

WebM project just released the new Aylesbury version of the libvpx VP8 codec, which reportedly provides the following advantages with respect to the previous release:

20-40% (average 28%) improvement in libvpx decoder speed
Over 7% overall PSNR improvement (6.3% SSIM) in VP8 "best" quality encoding mode, and up to 60% improvement on very noisy, still or slow moving source video.

The next release, called Bali, is scheduled for Q1 2011.

The Hype Cycle

2010-10-26T15:43:00.000+02:00

Source: Gartner and Hexus channel.

Gartner on Cisco ūmi

2010-10-20T20:00:00.000+02:00

Nick Jones, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, commented the new Cisco ūmi telepresence system in this blog post, using the following words:

Why would any sane consumer pay $600 plus $30 a month for something which is available for free elsewhere? I can’t imagine how Cisco imagine this product can provide enough value to convince consumers who believe video calls are something that comes for free with Skype. Based on what I know at the moment I’ll be amazed if it succeeds.

Glasses-free 3DTV unlikely?

2010-10-18T21:44:00.003+02:00

B.K. Yoon, the president of visual displays over at Samsung (the world's largest flat-screen television maker by shipments), said recently that he doesn't think we'll be seeing glasses-free 3D televisions in homes any time in the near future. In fact, he predicts that we'll be waiting five to ten years before the technology is good enough and cheap enough.

Yoon says that's not true of handheld devices like cell phones and Nintendo's 3DS. The trouble, he explains, comes when trying to mass produce large displays – there are just too many problems with efficiency and cost.

However, rival Toshiba Corp. of Japan earlier this month unveiled the world's first glasses-free 3D liquid-crystal-display television sets, less than a year after most set makers launched 3D television sets that require the cumbersome eyewear. The company has said it plans to start selling the glasses-free TVs in December.

Sources: High-Def Digest, Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft patents GPU-accelerated video encoding

2010-10-15T21:31:00.000+02:00

In October 2004 Microsoft applied for a patent titled “Accelerated video encoding using a graphics processing unit”, which has been now granted.

It outlines a concept where the GPU is used, among others, to perform motion estimation in videos, the use of the depth buffer of the GPU, to determine comprising, collocating video frames, mapping pixels to texels, frame processing using the GPU and output of data to the CPU.

The patent appears to cover all bases of GPU-accelerated video encoding, which hands Microsoft the rights to a major technology that already impacts prosumer applications and is making its way into the mainstream as we are moving into HD and beyond.

Source: Conceivably Tech.

WebP image compression

2010-10-08T16:57:00.004+02:00

Google's WebP is a method of lossy compression that can be used on photographic images. WebP offers compression that reportedly has shown 39.8% more byte-size efficiency than JPEG for the same quality in a large scale study of 900,000 images on the Web. The degree of compression is adjustable so a user can choose the trade-off between file size and image quality. A WebP file consists of VP8 image data, and a container based on RIFF.

More information on the WebP website. A performance comparison between H.264 and VP8 for still image coding can be found here on the blog "Diary of an x264 developer".

Cisco ūmi telepresence

2010-10-07T09:56:00.008+02:00

Cisco introduces the new ūmi telepresence system, a first-of-its-kind consumer product that connects to an existing HD television and a broadband internet connection to create a clear, natural and lifelike video communications experience.

Once Cisco ūmi is connected to an HD television and a wired or wireless broadband connection, a remote control provides access to an on-screen user interface, through which users can make ūmi calls, access video messages, manage contacts, and customize their profile and settings.

Users can also record their own ūmi videos, which they can share on Facebook, on YouTube, or via email. Users can even keep in touch with people who don't have ūmi by placing and receiving video calls from any computer with a webcam and Google video chat.

The price is $599.

See the press release and the ūmi website.

Qualcomm AR

2010-10-06T09:33:00.002+02:00

Qualcomm Inc. announced the availability of its Augmented Reality Software Development Kit for Android smartphones. The kit will enable a new breed of applications that delivers interactive 3-D experiences on everyday objects, such as 3D gaming experiences on tabletops and interactive media experiences on product packaging and promotional items, according to San Diego-based Qualcomm.

The software is available on the Qualcomm Developer Network.

Graphene research wins Nobel prize

2010-10-05T23:05:00.002+02:00

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, two researchers who began their careers in Russia, have been awarded the 2010 Nobel prize for physics "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene."

Graphene is the world’s thinnest material and is also the strongest, while being stiff and yet flexible and extremely good conductor of heat and electricity. Electrons travel further in graphene than in any other material, opening up a range of electronic applications. These include: graphene transistors that could help communications technologies exploit the terahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum; high performance graphene-based integrated circuits and toxin and pollution sensors that are more sensitive than those currently available.

Graphene is also suitable for use in touch screens and optical applications and holds out promise for the creation of thin, elastic, lightweight composite materials.

Source: EETimes.

Glasses-free 3DTV

2010-10-05T22:57:00.002+02:00

Hoping to snare consumers who don’t like glasses with their 3DTVs, Toshiba unveiled two LCD 3DTVs that don’t need them. Available by the end of the year in Japan, the 3DTVs will be available in 12- and 20-inch sizes, and allow for 2D viewing as well. Toshiba did not reveal prices, or say when the 3DTVs would be available elsewhere.

“The commercial launch of our 12-inch and 20-inch 3DTVs without glasses in Japan is a first step into the 3D future in the consumer home cinema market,” said Sascha Lange, head of marketing for Toshiba Visual Products, Europe. “But it will take several years to develop larger 3DTVs without glasses with screen sizes of 40 inches and more at a yet reasonable price point.”

Source: Home Media Magazine.

New MVC/SVC broadcast encoder

2010-09-28T21:04:00.002+02:00

Allegro DVT announces its new AL8000 broadcast encoder, packed with new features for H.264/MVC and H.264/SVC applications. The AL8000 complies with AVC high profile at level 4.2, SVC scalable high profile at level 4.2 and MVC stereo high profile at level 4.1. Three use cases are forecasted: H.264/SVC for 2D, H.264/SVC for 3D and H.264/MVC for 3D.

More information at http://www.allegrodvt.com/news.php.

Google TV this autumn

2010-09-08T12:03:00.002+02:00

Google Inc. will launch its Android-based Google TV service to bring the Web to TV screens in the United States this autumn and worldwide next year, its chief executive said, as it extends its reach from the desktop to the living room. CEO Eric Schmidt said the service, which will allow full Internet browsing via the television, would be free, and Google would work with a variety of programme makers and electronics manufacturers to bring it to consumers.

Sony said last week it had agreed to have Google TV on its television sets, and Samsung has said it was looking into using the service.

PC gaming h/w market

2010-09-01T09:26:00.001+02:00

The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), a nonprofit corporation dedicated to driving the worldwide growth of PC gaming, unveiled its Horizons Hardware research report, an exclusive research study encompassing major aspects of the PC gaming hardware industry worldwide. Among the key findings: Annual shipment volumes for the PC Gaming hardware market in 2009 were over two times larger than the combined Wii™, PlayStation® 2, PlayStation® 3 and Xbox 360® console units shipped in the same period. This trend for the PC Gaming hardware market to outpace all console shipments combined is expected to continue through the forecasted period of the research...

Source: PCGA.

H.264/AVC: forever free

2010-08-30T12:12:00.003+02:00

On August 26, MPEG LA announced that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire life of this License.

MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge royalties for such video through December 31, 2015, and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing.

The move is arguably aimed at contrasting Google's royalty-free WebM format, especially in view of the forthcoming HTML5 standard.

iPad TV everywhere

2010-08-23T20:03:00.004+02:00

Verizon Communications is prepping a new live TV streaming app for tablet PCs like the Apple iPad, a move that could eventually eliminate the need for a home set-top box and set the stage for true "TV everywhere" viewing.

The new app allows Fios TV subscribers to stream live TV from their service onto an iPad over a home Wi-Fi connection.

Initially, the service will work only in the home, but Verizon CIO Shaygan Kheradpir said that eventually the service could be offered as part of Verizon's TV-anywhere strategy, allowing people to access live TV anywhere they are using a username and password to authenticate the service.

Source: cnet news.

MPEGIF Advanced Technology

2010-08-20T09:29:00.002+02:00

The MPEG Industry Forum announces the formation of the Advanced Technology Working Group. The goal of the new group is to position MPEGIF and its membership to be better able to address and promote new technologies and the adoption of associated standards that could have major impact on television products and services. Areas of work will include 3DTV, DRM and Interoperability and Conformance Testing programs.

Scalable Video Coding for Windows 7

2010-08-18T21:03:00.003+02:00

«Recent shipments of Windows 7 for business, comprised almost entirely of multi-core systems, showcase Nefsis scalable video conferencing capabilities for business applications. Nefsis delivers high-quality HD video to Windows 7 desktops by expanding video scalability in three ways: across its worldwide server cloud; across multiple processing cores at each participant's personal computer; and through the use of Scalable Video Coding. With this technology advance virtually any business can enjoy high quality video conferencing that was once the exclusive domain of expensive boardroom installations.»

Source: Nefsis News.

3DTV and HDTV interest

2010-08-18T19:54:00.003+02:00

Nations in the MEAP (Middle East, Africa, Pakistan) region dominate other global regions in ownership of and interest in 3DTVs, according to a new study from The Nielsen Company.

MEAP is by far the region with the greatest 3DTV ownership/interest levels. MEAP has an ownership/definite interest index score of 200, meaning residents in MEAP nations are twice as likely as the global average to own or plan to buy a 3DTV. Latin America follows with an index score of 175.

North America has the highest penetration of HDTVs of any major global region, according to other Nielsen study results. “How People Watch” indicates North America leads in the ownership of high-definition television sets. According to Nielsen analysis, dropping prices, a rapid onset of content and the adoption of Blu-ray players and next-generation video game consoles make North Americans 57% more likely than average to own an HDTV set.

Source: Marketing Charts.

SVC implications for videoconference

2010-08-13T09:29:00.000+02:00

«Frost & Sullivan believes that SVC is a key milestone in achieving higher quality video at lower network and infrastructure costs, addressing two of the key roadblocks for more pervasive videoconferencing adoption - cost and quality. We believe that even vendors with popular proprietary CODECs will be forced to give SVC its due diligence as it is standards-based and offers undisputable advantages to end users.»

Source: Frost&Sullivan

ITU-T Question 5/16

2010-08-12T22:46:00.006+02:00

At the last meeting held in Geneva between July 19 and 30, ITU-T Study Group 16 approved on an urgent basis the Question 5 on Telepresence Systems. The Rapporteur for the new Question is Mr Stephen Botzko (Polycom, USA). The motivation for the new Q.5/16 is as follows.

Telepresence represents an important evolution of the videoconferencing market. This trend is expected to accelerate, as mainstream video applications begin to offer telepresence features. Many products exist today that, although they are based on IETF SIP and ITU-T H.323 protocols, lack interoperability due to proprietary extensions needed to these base protocols to offer a user-rich experience. The increased penetration of broadband communications and higher user awareness of video applications, coupled with financial and environmental gains brought by remote collaboration tools have brought a boost to applications such as telepresence. This makes it important that standardized solutions be developed to ensure multi-vendor interoperability on a global basis.

IETV vs. 3DTV

2010-08-10T10:53:00.002+02:00

"Despite aggressive promotions from the industry and intense consumer interest generated by the blockbuster Avatar and other titles, the 3-D TV market in 2010 will be limited to a small pool of enthusiastic early adopters,” said Riddhi Patel, director and principal analyst for television systems at iSuppli. “In contrast, Internet-Enabled TVs (IETV) is entering the mainstream in 2010. This is because 3-D is still dealing with a number of barriers, including cost, content availability and interoperability, while IETV provides immediate benefits by allowing TV viewers to access a range of content readily available on the Internet.”

Shipments of IETVs in 2010 will rise by a remarkable 124.9 percent from 12.3 million units last year. Significant growth will continue during the following years. All told, IETV shipments will expand at rates north of 50 percent for the next two years, and then continue to increase at solid double-digit rates until the end of 2014. By then, global IETV shipments are anticipated to reach 148.3 million units, accounting for 54 percent of the total flat-panel TV market.

Source: iSuppli.

Nokia Snubs Symbian for MeeGo

2010-06-25T12:57:00.002+02:00

A Nokia spokesperson confirmed the company will use the Linux MeeGo operating system in its flagship N-series platform in a bid to remain competitive against the iPhone and Android smartphones. MeeGo was formed in February through the merging of Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo mobile operating systems. Nokia will continue to use its Symbian operating system for its lower-end smartphones.

Source: Linux news.

Skype to any device

2010-06-24T14:41:00.002+02:00

The SkypeKit SDK supplies APIs for plugging into Skype's messaging, voice, and video chat service. It also includes an implementation of SILK, the company's audio compression codec. The SDK is currently in closed beta and is only supported on Linux at this stage. Skype intends to extend the SDK to additional platforms next month and will eventually make it more broadly accessible. Skype envisions hardware makers using the SDK to add voice and video chat to devices like televisions.

See also Ars Technica and Engadget.

Looking at VP9

2010-06-22T23:19:00.003+02:00

Jim Bankoski, Codec Engineering Manager at Google, wrote on the WebM official blog that they have added an experimental branch to the VP8 source tree.

The WebM community can use this unstable branch to propose changes to VP8 that will produce the best video codec possible, but without the constraints of a frozen bitstream.

At some point in the future, when the experimental branch proves significantly better than the stable branch, they will create a new version of the codec.

MPEG Workshop on Visual Search

2010-06-18T21:56:00.001+02:00

MPEG is organizing a Workshop on Visual Search, to be held in conjunction with the 93rd MPEG meeting, in Geneva, Switzerland.

The goal of the meeting is an exchange among companies and university labs driving the technology and the commercial deployment of visual search applications.

MPEG plans to host a small number of invited talks reviewing the underlying technology, addressing applications and requirements a standards body should consider, and/or reporting experiences with prototypes and commercial deployments.

H.264 (03/2010)

2010-06-11T16:23:00.003+02:00

ITU-T Rec. H.264 version (03/2010) is now in force and freely available here.

This revision defines a new profile (the Stereo High profile) for two-view video coding with support of interlaced coding tools and specifies the frame packing arrangement SEI message, plus some miscellaneous corrections and clarifications.

WebM Project

2010-05-20T19:50:00.004+02:00

As announced, Google opened the VP8 codec to the open source community as the WebM Project.

WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska container. The full source code is freely donwloadable.

Just yesterday the x264 community released his personal technical opinion on the VP8 codec in this blog post.

26% of web video is H.264

2010-05-14T21:49:00.004+02:00

Over one quarter of the videos on the Internet are now available in H.264/AVC format, according to the latest analysis from MeFeedia: 26% compared with just 10% in January. MeFeedia’s video index includes over 30,000 sources, including Hulu, CBS, ABC, YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, MTV, and CNN.

Notably, most sites that support HTML5 automatically detect iPad users and switch to a compatible format, many recent news stories are available in H.264 while most older news content has yet to be re-encoded, and there is very little HTML5 supported episodic content available from major TV networks.

Inside Apple's A4

2010-05-14T11:32:00.004+02:00

An analysis by UBM TechInsights shows the Apple A4 processor in the iPad is a single-core ARM Cortex A8 made by Samsung.

Source: Embedded.com

Radvision selects Freescale for HD Videoconference

2010-05-12T12:17:00.003+02:00

Freescale Semiconductor’s high-performance MSC8144 multicore digital signal processor (DSP) has been selected by Radvision for use in its latest high-definition SCOPIA Elite 5000 Unified Communications Video Infrastructure Multiparty Conferencing Unit.

SCOPIA Elite is the industry’s first standards based MCU to natively support advanced H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) technology. RADVISION’s SVC technology provides a high quality experience over unmanaged networks such as the public Internet, particularly benefitting desktop video conferencing users on the road or teleworkers from their home offices. This approach provides the benefits of high error resiliency while maintaining full interoperability and high quality with conferencing and telepresence systems not currently using SVC.

Tuned for a myriad of wireline and wireless applications, Freescale’s MSC8144 DSP is the workhorse behind SCOPIA Elite high-definition video compression processing, enabling it with high channel density, energy efficiency and form factor advantages. The MSC8144 combines four high-performance 1 GHz DSP cores based on SC3400 StarCore™ technology with 10 MB internal memory and high-speed interconnects such as Serial RapidIO® and Gigabit Ethernet interfaces.

Sources: Businesswire, Radvision.

HEVC and HTTP streaming

2010-05-08T00:37:00.004+02:00

Many news from the 92nd MPEG meeting held in Dresden, Germany from the 19th to the 23rd of April 2010.

The Joint Call for Proposals on Video Compression Technology, which was issued jointly by MPEG and ITU-T VCEG in January 2010, had a very successful outcome. 27 complete proposal submissions were received, and the associated video material was evaluated in extensive subjective tests. The JCT-VC has begun identification and integration of proposed design elements toward development of a new video coding design to be known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).

Moreover, MPEG has decided to launch a separate and immediate standardization effort specifically addressing the need of HTTP based streaming or progressive download of MPEG media and a Call for Proposals, available here, was issued.

The future will be (auto)captioned

2010-05-06T21:28:00.008+02:00

YouTube has turned on the ability to add full closed captions to videos. This will not only allow videos to appeal more directly to foreign audiences, but will give YouTube excellent data for searching videos and targeting ads to them.

Quoting the official YouTube blog:

Making video easily accessible is something we're working hard to address at YouTube. One of the first steps we took was the development of a caption feature in 2008. In November of last year we released auto-captioning for a small, select group of partners. Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google's Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages -- all in just a couple of clicks.

Flash thoughts

2010-04-30T23:05:00.003+02:00

I wanted to jot down some of our thoughts on Adobe’s Flash products so that customers and critics may better understand why we do not allow Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads.

Read Steve Jobs' thoughts on Flash on the Apple website.

Microsoft takes H.264 stand

2010-04-30T22:59:00.003+02:00

"In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only," Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog post. His reasons for the support: the format is widely used in the computing industry, from video cameras to Google's YouTube, it benefits from hardware decoding support that improves performance, and there are questions about the rights to use H.264's chief rival today, Ogg Theora.

The Web video muddle undermines Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs' argument against Flash made Thursday. He argues that a collection of new Web technologies including HTML5's video can replace what Flash offers and touts the H.264 support in the iPhone, iPad, and Safari. But while the Web video codec debate continues, developers can use Flash to smooth over differences--as long as they don't need to reach the iPhone.

Full article on cnet news.

Beyond HDTV

2010-04-17T14:23:00.004+02:00

"Beyond HDTV: Implications for Digital Delivery" is an independent report by ZetaCast Ltd, commissioned by Ofcom and released on July 2009.

This report provides a review of next generation television display technology developments, in order to gain insight into the bit rates likely to be required to deliver such services in the future. It concentrates on the potential development of stereoscopic TV (“3D” TV) and Ultra High Definition television (UHDTV), although other issues such as higher frame rate, wider aspect ratio, greater bit depth, improved chrominance resolution and wider colour gamut are also considered.

The report is freely available in PDF.

Google to open VP8

2010-04-14T12:41:00.002+02:00

According to a report at NewTeeVee, inside sources have confirmed that Google will be open-sourcing the On2 VP8 video codec next month at the Google I/O conference. Mozilla and Google will also reportedly announce plans to implement support for VP8 in their respective browsers at that time. The move could have profound ramifications on the viability of standards-based video playback and the future of rich media on the Internet.

Nokia acquires MetaCarta

2010-04-13T10:32:00.001+02:00

Nokia announced that it has acquired MetaCarta Inc., a privately owned company which employs over 30 people and has expertise in geographic intelligence solutions.

MetaCarta Inc. provides technology for finding anything written about any place. MetaCarta unique technology combines geosearch and geotagging capabilities allowing users to find content about a location in internal and external data stores. MetaCarta's products make data and unstructured content "location-aware" and geographically relevant for easier organization and quicker action. MetaCarta's technology will be used in the area of local search in Location and other services.

Advanced Image Coding

2010-04-07T14:23:00.003+02:00

The Advanced Image Coding and Evaluation Methodologies (ISO/IEC 29170 - AIC), is a new JPEG work item for standardization of a new evaluation approaches and image compression system for any potential technologies can be identified which significantly would improve the current image coding standards.

AIC ad hoc group is pleased to announce the production of calls for technologies, use cases, requirement, evaluation procedures and test material for three targeted applications: medical imaging, camera sensors imaging and security applications. AIC ad hoc group also continues the progress in the creation of guidelines for evaluation of coding technologies.

See the press release of the 51st WG1 meeting.

Natal motion sensor

2010-04-02T09:40:00.008+02:00

Microsoft Corp. and PrimeSense, a company developing 3D-sensing and recognition technologies, announced that PrimeSense will be providing its technology for use in the Project Natal motion sensor for Xbox 360.

The PrimeSensor Reference Design is a low-cost, plug and play, USB-powered device that can either sit on top of or next to a television screen or a monitor, or be integrated into them. The Reference Design generates realtime depth, color and audio data of the living room scene. It works in all room lighting conditions (whether in complete darkness or in a fully lit room). It does not require the user to wear or hold anything, does not require calibration and does not require computational resources from the host’s processor.

The PrimeSense SoC contains a highly parallel computational logic designed by PrimeSense that calculates the depth value of every pixel, based on the signal from a standard CMOS sensor and the NITE processing middleware translates raw visual data, such as depth and color, into meaningful application commands.

XCode 4210

2010-03-26T17:06:00.002+01:00

The newly launched XCode 4210 by ViXS incorporates a dual HD 1080p30 decoder that supports picture in picture and the latest H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) decoding standard for content transition to 1080p60/50 broadcasting and an additional media processing engine for flexible decoding of multiple Internet formats.

The XCode 4210 has the ability to transcrypt and transcode any multimedia content to any multimedia and container formats allowing seamless streaming, downloading and sideloading to a multitude of connected consumer entertainment devices, such as set-top box, PC/laptop, TV, game console, DLNA client, wireless tablet, consumer electronics, and wired or wireless portable or smart phone.

The XCode 4210 delivers user performance in excess of 3,200 DMIPS distributed over a main MIPS 74k applications processor and two ARC 750D offload processors, all simultaneously running their own real time operating systems. This level of performance has set a new benchmark in application and communications processing with the highest sustained networked data throughput over 400 Mbit/s in a single chipset.

See the press release.

Interactive television advertising overview

2010-03-20T12:24:00.004+01:00

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced the release of “An Interactive Television Advertising Overview”, the latest in its series of Platform Status Reports aimed at educating marketers, agencies and publishers on the state of interactive advertising platforms.

The report provides:

An overview of the U.S. interactive television market, including audience segments and specific advertising options for reaching those consumers
Key definitions and nomenclature used in interactive television and specific campaign metrics
Case studies that highlight the available interactive television advertising products
An overview of the different providers of interactive television advertising and their respective capabilities
An explanation of key technological and strategic challenges facing interactive television

See the press release and download the report here.

SeaWell Networks

2010-03-12T20:25:00.001+01:00

SeaWell Networks Inc. is a provider of Internet video delivery products designed for use by content producers and their content delivery partner organizations. SeaWell leverages video compression standard, H.264 scalable video coding (SVC), to uniquely create and deliver a high-quality viewing experience online while significantly reducing the cost of delivery.

“SeaWell’s technology is a game-changing innovation that allows video providers to create Internet-ready video content and deliver it to any screen or device in HD quality full-screen resolution or in lower resolutions for low bandwidth mobile devices,” said Northwater Vice President and current SeaWell director, Andrew Harrison. “SeaWell will create a superior experience for the viewer on a platform that is more flexible and infinitely more scalable.”

For more information see www.seawellnetworks.com.

Full SVC with interoperability in 2010

2010-03-09T22:30:00.002+01:00

Polycom announced that it will deliver the industry's first "Full Scalable Video Coding" (Full SVC) solution in 2010, which will further address reduced bandwidth requirements, error concealment during packet loss, enhanced scalability for multipoint calling and universality - or interoperability across a broad set of video protocols.

According to Polycom, today's limited SVC solutions attempt to address these issues, but lack standards-based signaling, which precludes interoperability with any other SVC-based systems, and, more importantly, lack interoperability with all standards-based telepresence systems, desktop video collaboration applications and legacy video conferencing endpoints.

Polycom intends to deliver the first Full SVC solution that addresses all of these issues and provides unmatched interoperability. With Full SVC deployed across video endpoints and infrastructure, Polycom will extend the benefits of SVC universally, allowing modern video systems from across multiple standards to fully interoperate with SVC systems, legacy systems, H.264 systems, Microsoft RTV systems, etc.

See the full press release.

HDMI 1.4a

2010-03-08T15:56:00.003+01:00

The latest HDMI specification adds key enhancements to support the market requirements for bringing broadcast 3D content into the home, i.e. the addition of two mandatory formats for broadcast content: Side-by-Side Horizontal and Top-and-Bottom. With this addition, the HDMI Specification Version 1.4a provides a level of interoperability for devices designed to deliver 3D content over the HDMI connection.

The 3D Mandatory Formats are:

For movie content:
- Frame Packing
  - 1080p @ 23.98/24Hz
For game content:
- Frame Packing
  - 720p @ 50 or 59.94/60Hz
For broadcast content:
- Side-by-Side Horizontal
  - 1080i @ 50 or 59.94/60Hz
- Top-and-Bottom
  - 720p @ 50 or 59.94/60Hz
  - 1080p @ 23.97/24Hz

See the press release.

Multimedia Grand Challenge 2010

2010-03-06T16:49:00.005+01:00

Submissions for the ACM Multimedia Grand Challenge 2010 must significantly address one of the industry challenges posted on the Grand Challenge web site and depict working, presentable systems or demos.

The top submissions will be presented in a special event during the ACM Multimedia 2010 conference in Florence, Italy. Based on the presentation, winners will be selected for Grand Challenge awards.

2010 challenges are the following:

Google challenge: Robust, As-Accurate-As-Human Genre Classification for Video
Google challenge: Indexing and Fast Interactive Searching in Personal Diaries
Radvision challenge: Video Conferencing To Surpass “In-Person” Meeting Experience
Radvision challenge: Real-time Data Collaboration Adaptation for Multi-Device Video Conferencing
HP challenge: High Impact Visual Communication
Nokia challenge: Where was this Photo Taken, and How?
Yahoo! challenge: Novel Image Understanding
Yahoo! challenge: Robust Automatic Segmentation of Video According to Narrative Themes

WIAMIS 2010

2010-03-05T23:46:00.003+01:00

The preliminary program of the 11th International Workshop on Image Analysis for Multimedia Interactive Services (WIAMIS 2010) is now available here and the Advanced System Technology labs of STMicroelectronics had 4 papers accepted for presentation:

"Constant quality variable bit-rate control for SVC" by Tea Anselmo and Daniele Alfonso.
"Error Concealment of Intra Coded Video Frames" by Riccardo Bernardini, Luca Celetto, Gianluca Gennari, Matteo Petrani and Roberto Rinaldo.
"H.264/AVC Stereo Video Compression Benchmarking" by Subarna Tripathi, Emiliano Piccinelli and Davide Aliprandi.
"Segment-Based Depth Maps Extraction from Stereo Video Content" by Alberto La Martina, Davide Aliprandi and Emiliano Piccinelli

See you in Desenzano del Garda, Italy.