SVC implications for videoconference

«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

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

"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

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

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

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

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)

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.