From: "Krishna" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> from : http://siliconvalley.internet.com/news/article.php/1364461
June 11, 2002 Who Needs MPEG-4? By Michael Singer Two tech companies on opposite sides of the globe say they have a better solution to the multimedia buzz over MPEG-4 (define). Campbell, Calif.-based Equator and Tel Aviv, Israel-based Moonlight Cordless Limited Tuesday unveiled a full resolution and low-bitrate MPEG-2 real-time encoder for Equator's BSP family of Broadband Signal Processor devices. The real-time D1 MPEG-2 encoder is being featured at the DSP 2002 Conference in Tel Aviv this week. The companies say the program offers superior video quality at substantially lower bitrate while maintaining full standard-compliance. Equator and Moonlight say the solution can be used for a wide range of video-centric applications ranging from set-top boxes, personal video recorders to digital video security and surveillance applications. The quality is so good, the companies say it makes a compelling alternative to fixed-function, hard-wired MPEG-2 codec solutions or even MPEG-4. "We put our open programmable platform to its best use to deliver the best of both worlds -- an MPEG-2 implementation that maintains full standards compliance and delivers dramatically lower bitrate and better picture quality," said Equator president and CEO Avi Katz. "MPEG-2 at the kind of bitrate and picture quality that are typically associated with MPEG-4 presents some brand new business opportunities for our customers." The platform uses an advanced intelligent motion estimator with an extremely large search window, and a new psycho-visual based rate control. Moonlight said the D1 real-time MPEG-2 encoder also uses only a fraction of the BSP-15 device, leaving plenty of computing power to perform other software tasks. The solution supports bitrates ranging from 1Mbps to 8 Mbps. Other key features of the encoders include constant DVD quality video encoding at sub 2 Mbps, DVD quality transcoding to sub 2 Mbps bitrate, Field/Frame prediction, Interlaced/Progressive output, and Offline HDTV encoding. "We share Equator's belief that one does not have to compromise standard compliance in order to gain performance or bandwidth advantage and we have the codec technology to fulfill this promise. The Equator's BSP platform provide us with both the programmability and the horse power to implement a very competitive solution," said Moonlight CEO Naftaly Sharir. "Whether it is to lower bandwidth requirement in streaming media applications, to improve video quality or to lengthen recording time of personal video recorders and digital video recorders for security applications, our solution enables our customers to deliver high-performance, competitive, and cost effective products." As a company, Equator offers the BSP family of Broadband Signal Processor chips, the iMMediaTools software development toolkit, media libraries, and reference platforms for development and deployment of video streaming and video processing systems. Based on a high-performance VLIW core and optimized for video processing, the company's BSP-15 family of chips delivers up to 40 GOPS of video processing power. Utilizing Equator's optimizing compiler technology, BSP-15 chips are 100 percent programmable in C/C++. The company said its software programmable BSP-15 chip could replace multiple fixed-function ASICs. Moonlight is known for its Soft System On-a-Chip and PC software products, which promise powerful and cost-effective video codecs for consumer electronics and PCs, over existing standards (mainly MPEG-2 and MPEG-4). -- Compu-Mania MailingList, provided by PT Centrin Online Tbk Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED], body: unsubscribe Compu-Mania Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Info: [EMAIL PROTECTED], body: help
