von apple unterstuetzte technologie von DVB abgesegnet (englisch)

Anzeige

http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/11/09/avc/index.php

November 09, 2004 1:10 pm ET
MacCentral



Apple supported technologies approved by DVB

By Jim Dalrymple jdalrymple@maccentral.com

The Digital Video Broadcasting Steering Board (DVB) has approved a revision to its implementation guidelines for audio and video codecs over a broadcast Transport Stream. The revision includes two technologies supported by Apple Computer Inc., H.264 or Advanced Video Codec (AVC) and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codecs.

AVC and AAC are codecs supported by MPEG-4, an open standard technology based on the QuickTime file format and adopted by the ISO governing body.

"The investment we made in the MPEG-4 standard is paying off incredible dividends for QuickTime and for Apple," Frank Casanova, Apple's director of QuickTime product marketing, told MacCentral. "Allowing the ISO the use our file format has turned out to be the best decisions we could have made."

AVC was discussed less than a year ago as an up-and-coming codec, but in recent months the technology has gained traction being ratified for the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray specs -- the two new standards for high definition content on DVDs.

"AVC is clearly the chosen direction, which comes as no surprise to me because interoperability across any industry is important," said Casanova. "Any proprietary technology would naturally get shutout where interoperability and openness is required. MPEG-4 provides a level of openness and compatibility that all of these different industries from 3G to HD all require."

In addition to the ratification by DVB, AVC has received the nod from the MPEG-4 group, the 3GGP group and the Association of Japanese Broadcasters. While worldwide support for the technology has been quick, the United States broadcasters have yet to ratify AVC, except for use in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. With the benefits the technology brings to broadcasters, Apple thinks it's just a matter of time.

"The broadcasters in the U.S. haven't mad a final decision about what technologies they will use, but I think it's just a matter of time," said Casanova. "Japan and the European community have gone forward and I have no doubt that as the broadcast communities here in the U.S. decide how to make the most effective use of the bandwidth available, they will chose AVC. It makes good business sense -- it saves them bandwidth and at the same time gives them more programming flexibility."

With its ability to encode content for so many mediums, Casanova sees uses for AVC in many of the everyday things we do today, including DVD movies, Cable television providers, on-demand television in hotels and next-generation cellular telephones. For example, with AVC, DVD content authoring houses could use the same size DVD disk, but output the content in HD quality.

"Cable providers will be able to encode their content at HD quality and send it down the wire at the same data rate as MPEG-2, yet get much better quality," said Casanova.

As with MPEG-4 itself, AVC is an open standard, which means that many different companies contribute to the process of evolving the codec into something the public sees on their computer or television.

"This is a technology that we've been intimately involved with for a while -- everybody, including Apple is very excited about this. It's about interoperability, standards and openness -- something we've been all about across QuickTime and much of Apple for a long time."

Competition from Microsoft

Microsoft Corp. is touting its Windows Media Player 9 format as competition for AVC, but Casanova sees several reasons that AVC will win out in the end, not the least of which is performance.

"Windows Media 9 is a few years old and it's evolved a few times," said Casanova. "AVC is brand new -- it's just at the very beginning of its quality and optimization curves. This puts us in an incredible advantage from a competitive standpoint because Windows Media has likely had most of its optimizations and performance wrung out of it already by Microsoft's engineers and we're just getting started."

Microsoft has submitted the Windows Media 9 format to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers as a standard, but unlike an open standard, only Microsoft can make changes and enhancements to the Windows Media format. With an open standard like AVC, all member companies contribute to the technology.

"We feel so confident about this technology against the competition [Windows Media 9]," said Casanova. "We have no concerns at all -- we are thrilled with it from a video standpoint and certainly I couldn't be happier from a worldwide industry adoption perspective."

Apple has long preached the benefits of using and promoting open standards in its software. It is the interoperability of these standards that Apple believes will lead AVC to continue to be adopted in the future.

"The DVB selection of AVC is just one more example of where the world is insisting on open standards," said Casanova. "It doesn't matter if you're a cell phone manufacturer, broadcaster or producer of HD decoded video, interoperability counts. AVC is being ratified into relevancy by all of these standards organizations and Apple is right there.

"In this world of 'my codec is better than yours' -- this codec is better," said Casanova.

 

AW: von apple unterstuetzte technologie von DVB abgesegnet (englisch)

mit der gleichen bandbreite wie mpeg2 dvb stream HDTV 1080 ins dvb-c/s/t... das sind doch extrem gute nachrichten, oder))

die zukunft sieht sehr gut aus fuer alle, die es nicht erwarten koennen HDTV 1080 auf ihre mattscheibe zu bekommen

somit wird die ausrede nicht mehr gelten koennen, kabel oder satellit hat nicht genug bandbreite, um alle sender auf hdtv1080i umzustellen... ich waere schon mit hdtv720p zufrieden...

mfg

 

AW: von apple unterstuetzte technologie von DVB abgesegnet (englisch)

Das waere ja furchtbar .... AVC HD mit SD Datenrate...

Die Datenrate ist ja heuzutage fuer SD schon zu gering und mit AVC mit vieleicht 50% besserer Komprimierung aber der 6fachen Datenmenge kann das doch nichts werden. Das schlimme daran ist vorallem, dass man nicht gleich Kloetzchen sieht wenn die Rate nicht reicht, sondern alles einfach matschig wird.

Der schon mal den Unterschied zwischen MPEG2 Broadcast HDTV und WMV9-HD gesehen hat, weiss wovon ich sprechen...

 

AW: von apple unterstuetzte technologie von DVB abgesegnet (englisch)

http://www.dvb.org/index.php?id=10&nid=91

DVB Approves New Guidelines for H.264/AVC Video & High Efficiency AAC Audio Codecs

02 November 2004



Geneva, 2nd November 2004 - The DVB Steering Board has approved a revision to its well known implementation guidelines for audio and video codecs over a broadcast Transport Stream to include the option of both H.264/AVC video and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codecs. The revision to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) document (TS 101 154) will now be forwarded to ETSI for standardisation and will be published shortly. Upon publication it will be available for download via www.etsi.org.




The new document mandates support of Main Profile for H.264/AVC SDTV receivers, with an option for the use of High Profile. The support of High Profile is mandated for H.264/AVC HDTV receivers.


Entitled "Implementation guidelines for the use of Video and Audio Coding in Broadcasting Applications based on the MPEG-2 Transport Stream", the latest addition to the DVB family of standards is designed to promote interoperability between transmissions and receivers by describing a set of requirements for implementing the codecs in a Transport Stream, i.e. the traditional DVB broadcast environment used in cable, satellite and terrestrial transmissions.


Peter MacAvock, DVB’s Executive Director said: “This document is one of the most important DVB documents, and a key to ensuring the interoperability of DVB equipment and transmissions. It is the basis of all MPEG-2 DVB decoders in the market. The addition of H.264/AVC and HE-AAC paves the way for using these exciting codecs in mainstream DVB applications like HDTV.”


Previously, the document included MPEG-2 video, MPEG-1 Layer II audio, Dolby AC-3 audio, and DTS audio. This revision of the document adds H.264/AVC video (MPEG-4 Part 10) and High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) to the range of codecs that may be used in DVB applications. Both H.264/AVC and HE-AAC bring substantial improvements in coding efficiency over MPEG-2 and associated audio codecs, and are the subject of much interest, especially for prospective new HDTV services.


A separate specification, TS 102 005, covers the use of audio and video codecs for the delivery of DVB services directly over IP networks (without Transport Stream).