Leading companies co-operate to demonstrate Advanced Video Coding (AVC) compression technology and applications at NAB-2005

31 March 2005
New York, London, Amsterdam & Tokyo

Over 45 companies world-wide combine to show their support for AVC

AVC continues to gain industry-wide support. An ever increasing number of leading international companies are co-operating under the umbrella of the AVC alliance (www.avc-alliance.org) to provide a selection of highly innovative demonstrations representing a wide spectrum of applications based on the Advanced Video Coding (AVC, MPEG-4 Part 10, H.264) technology.

AVC heralds a new breakthrough in terms of video quality while affording significant savings in bandwidth required. The new technology enables very high quality video services via relatively low bandwidth delivery channels, for broadcast television, internet and mobile networks.

Booth No. SL 4101 on the ground floor in the South Hall (Multimedia Hall) in the Las-Vegas Convention Center will provide the focus for a selection of innovative applications, all embracing AVC for delivery of rich media services over broadcast, Internet and Mobile networks. The exhibit will include live coding and decoding of high-definition digital television, and some of the very first products to incorporate support for AVC High-Profile technology.

The technology has benefited from unprecedented industry support in the six short months since the first AVC alliance exhibit at IBC-2004 in Amsterdam;

“Premiere have chosen AVC for delivery of HDTV services” said Mr. Frank Hoffmann, Head of technology at Premiere. “It [AVC] offers the best solution for HDTV services, both now and for the future” he added.

Leading satellite broadcaster BSkyB is the most recent to announce their selection of MPEG-4, AVC for delivery of their new High Definition TV services scheduled for launch in 2006.

The French government have mandated the use of AVC for French Pay-TV services.

Each of these important endorsements stand as testimony to the quality and efficiency of the technology.

"The AVC codec is superior to any known video codec; for example, AVC achieves the same quality as MPEG-2 Video at typically less than half the bit-rate" said Thomas Wiegand, the Co-Chair of the Joint ITU-T / MPEG Team that developed the AVC standard. "This means that at the same bit rate as for MPEG-2, more than twice the number of TV channels can be transmitted at the same quality or the same number of TV channels with video of significantly higher resolution" he added.

Further evidence of acceptance stems from a variety of industry organizations including the DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting Project), ISMA (Internet Streaming & Media Alliance) as well as 3GPP.

“DVB and MPEG-4/AVC facilitate advanced low-bitrate HDTV and mobile broadcasting technology” said Peter McAvock, Executive Director, DVB.

Those companies supporting this initiative at NAB-2005 are;

Apple, ATEME, Barco, British Sky Broadcasting, Broadcom Corporation, Dicas, Dolby Laboratories, DVB, Envivio Inc., FastVDO, Fraunhofer Institute, Fujitsu Limited, Harmonic Inc., HP, IBM, ISMA, LSI Logic, MainConcept AG, Media Excel, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Modulus Video, Moonlight, Motorola, MPEG-IF, Neotion, Nero, Nokia, Pace Micro Technology plc, Packet Video, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer Corporation, Premiere Fernsehen GmbH & Co. KG, Samsung Electronics, Scientific Atlanta, Secure Media, Sharp Corporation, Sigma Designs, Sony Corporation, TANDBERG Television, Télévision Française – 1, Texas Instruments, Thomson, Victor Company of Japan Ltd., VITEC Multimedia Inc., Wegner.

Background Information: AVC is the new generation compression algorithm for consumer digital video. It is the result of work started in the ITU and in MPEG, completed in the Joint Video Team (JVT) made up from experts of the two organizations. The algorithm is published as H.264 by the ITU, while ISO/IEC publishes it as MPEG-4 Part 10.

The AVC alliance is a not for profit community of like-minded companies committed to the active promotion and the industry-wide success of Advanced Video Coding technology.

Contact: Web: www.avc-alliance.org e-mail: info@avc-alliance.org