Business News Holding

Tag: biztalk

  • HD Option A Big Hit For MyToons

    MyToons only launched its high definition channel a few months ago but already it’s attracting attention from several major TV and film studios.
    Paul Ford, president of the animation website, spoke to HDTV.biz-news.com about the burgeoning HD animation community and the challenges of offering high def cartoons on the internet.

    It’s one thing to stick a home-movie onto YouTube, quite another to create animation in high definition.

    Yet just a few months after launching its HD channel the cutting-edge animation site MyToons has become the leading showcase for high def cartoons.

    Paul Ford, MyToons’ president, said the number of HD uploads was growing rapidly and he expected that to continue as increasing numbers of animators presented their work.

    He described the quality and detail of the HD creations as mind-blowing.

    "People are taking to HD like mad," he said. "It’s been very well-received by both the animators and the fans. In fact, we’ve had calls from several major TV and film studios looking to licence the technology."

    Making animations in HD presents its own challenges

    Ford said there was a big difference between making online user-created video and animated content.

    He said creating YouTube-style content – with a handy cam or camcorder – was not really that difficult to do.

    "You think up a story or a bit, run around and shoot some stuff, maybe edit it in a consumer editor like Movie Maker or iMovie, and you’re done," he said.

    But Ford believed creating animated content, on any level, was much more difficult.

    "To create animation – and I mean any kind of animation, generally – there is far more thought, and far more preparation and planning involved," he said.

    "Usually the story comes first, and that takes time to develop. Next are the dialogue and music tracks, story boards and possibly animatics (animated storyboards).
    "Finally, after a lot more work creating the final piece, you are done."

    Ford said in between was many hours of tedious work drawing in 2D, modelling in 3D, creating backgrounds and props and crafting each frame of each scene.

    "This art does take a good amount of time to create. Much longer than user-created video, for sure," he said. "Creating animation in HD really takes things up yet another notch.

    "Not only does the animator need to think about and do all of the stuff I’ve already discussed, they need computers with the horse power to do it at HD resolution. This means long render times and huge files."

    Technology Delivers Online Cartoons

    Ford described the MyToons HD player technology as "second to none", adding that it wasn’t necessary to download a proprietary player as was the case with some of the non-animation HD video sites.

    But to get to the stage of being able to stream HD via the internet MyToons first had to do some "very, very tricky things".

    "Our HD is not progressive. In other words, a person is not downloading the file first, or a portion of it, and then able to view the file," he said.

    "MyToons HD is more like real television. You hit play, and it starts right up. Our player is able to read the HD data in realtime, giving the viewer that ‘instant-on’ experience they are used to."

    Based in San Antonio, Texas, MyToons was established in 2006 as an online resource and entertainment destination for professional animators, students, artists and animation fans.

    The attraction for animators or creators of having their work on MyToons is that it offers them a robust and reliable distribution platform at the quality level they expect, according to Ford.

    "Animators are finicky when it comes to quality," he said. "That’s why many, many animators I talk to regularly simply won’t put their stuff up on places like YouTube.

    "That work is usually so personal and so carefully crafted-to-perfection – it’s really seen by the creator as a direct reflection, of sorts, of themselves – and usually a labor of love.

    "Giving animators everywhere the ability to have their work experienced as they intended and envisioned is very powerful stuff."

    HD Audience Growing

    In August, MyToons announced a global partnership to bring its animated content to Vuze’s 30 million member worldwide audience.

    Setting up such partner channels was a means of giving independent animators even greater reach and more exposure.

    "We will continue with these partnerships because they are good for our members, and we always put the animator first – what’s good for them, is good for MyToons," said Ford.

    "We think that these channels add to MyToons, and don’t take away from it. We find many people coming directly from those channels to MyToons-proper to get more of the good stuff."

  • Symbian Vows To Sweep Clear Obstacles For Developers


    Symbian’s CEO Nigel Clifford spelt out his vision for the organisation’s future under Nokia as one which would sweep away previous obstacles and attract innovative developers.

    Giving the opening keynote speech at the Smartphone Show in London, Clifford admitted that up until now developers may have been put off working with Symbian because of licensing agreements and conditions.

    He promised that would be among the “double quick” changes that would be made when the deal by Nokia to purchase Symbian goes through next year.

    “We will take a popular operating system and user interfaces and create a new platform with a new identity,” he said.

    This would solve the conundrum that, according to Clifford, people had been faced with:  " We have so far lived in an either/or world where you can either have free code but with a small footprint – or you can have very capable, proven software but at a cost.

    “With Symbian we are moving from that to both ‘and’ – proven in the market place and for free.”

    Sporting a broken arm from a cycling accident, Clifford said the result of this would be that there would no longer need to be a trade-off in developers’ minds.

    He said the cost and effort would be taken out of the development track and a unified asset created.

    “We are sweeping the hurdles away so we can get on with the job at hand,” he said.

    Earlier, David Wood, executive vice president of research at Symbian, also stressed where the organisation’s emphasis would lie once the deal with Nokia was completed.

    “There are three words that are most important for the success of the Symbian platform going forward: developers, developers and developers,” he said.

  • Dialling INTO Your Smartphone To Get Easier


    Hundreds of millions of people have used Virtual Network Computing’s (VNC) remote access applications on their PCs.

    The Cambridge, UK-based company is now counting on the same success with its mobile version of allowing remote control both to and from smartphones.

    Speaking to smartphone.biz-news.com at the Smartphone Show in London, Andy Harter, CEO of VNC, said he expected the mobile edition to appeal to both IT departments and to consumers.

    With increasing numbers of employees now equipped with high-end handsets, he said the mobile viewer could be used for solving technical difficulties for staff in the field.

    The viewer could also give staff access to their office desktop machines if they needed to locate data not available on their handsets.

    Supporting all the major mobile platforms, including Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, iPhone and Mobile Linux, VNC Mobile provides cross-platform compatibility.

    Available in early 2009, no cost is yet available but Harter said the viewer would be priced sensibly.

    He said the applications could also be available on feature phones at some time in the near future.

  • Why Halt At Tethering One Device To Your Smartphone?


    It’s one thing to hear the corporate blurb about a product, quite another to hear company executives’ experience of using their own gear.

    Sean O’Leary, TapRoot Systems’ VP of marketing and business development, has just spent a week touring Europe relying on his company’s WalkingHotSpot software for internet connectivity.

    Launched six months ago as a beta version, the ability of the software to transform Windows Mobile 6 and S60 3G/Wi-Fi handsets into walking “hotspots” has proved very popular.

    The application is capable of tethering up to five devices through a Wi-Fi enabled smartphone.

    Users can retrieve emails and surf the web on devices such as laptops and MP3 players using their handsets’ wireless data plan without the need for the added expense of data cards and dongles.

    While O’Leary was never going to be the most neutral of critics there’s no doubt he is more than pleased with the success of his first hand exposure to the application.

    “Even using it on trains around Europe it worked seamlessly and there was never any problem with connecting,” he told smartphone.biz-news.com at the Smartphone Show in London.

    While 30 per cent of software downloads have been in the US, Europe hasn’t been slow to catch on to the advantages of WalkingHotSpot.

    O’Leary said it was possible to make calls while devices were connected without any degradation in quality for either the devices or the phone call.

    The software is available to download for either a one-time fee of USD $24.99 (€18) for the lifetime of the phone or as a monthly plan for USD $6.99 (€5).

    O’Leary said support for other major operating systems is coming soon.

    To owners of iPhones just being able to easily hook up one device to their handsets would be ample.

  • Flood Of Content Predicted For Real-time HDTV Video Streaming

    While more operators are beginning to offer HD video-on-demand services, live streaming video continues to pose infrastructure and bandwidth problems.

    HDTV.biz-news.com spoke to Alex Mashinsky, CEO of DigiMeld, about the challenges of streaming video – and developments that could open-up the service to millions of viewers.

    Alex Mashinsky, CEO of DigiMeld, was one of the first people to realise the internet’s great potential for voice, now he is just as excited about the possibilities it offers for video.

    He said the demand for real-time streaming of video was going to grow rapidly as high quality internet content was increasingly watched on HDTVs rather than PCs.

    “We are moving to a world where services from the internet do not look any different from cable TV,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge flood of content flowing to this environment, moving away from watching video on a laptop for five minutes at a time.”

    Alex Mashinsky, CEO DigiMeld


    Mashinsky said that while it was easy to get 16 million Americans to watch the same TV channel at the same time, it was impossible to do that with half-a-million viewers on the internet.

    “Voice was the first wave on the web. The second wave is video,” he told HDTV.biz-news.com from DigiMeld’s mid-town Manhattan headquarters. “But while everyone is focussed on it, we have not really solved the scaleability issue.

    Challenges Remain


    Video demands a lot of bandwidth and Mashinsky said traditional unicast and CDN solutions were limited in meeting the challenges on efficiency and scalability.

    He used the example of Oprah Winfrey’s attempt to stream live on her website, a move which caused the site to crash when more than 300,000 viewers logged-on.

    “We believe the only reason why we don’t have live TV on the internet is because no-one can really solve the scaleability and pricing issue,” said Mashinsky.

    “If you can address those two things, you would have linear streaming and on-demand streaming of movies and other things on a much larger scale than today.

    “Amazon, Netflix and Blockbuster have all launched streaming services but they are not launching new movies and having one million people watching at the same time. They rely on many people watching different things.”

    China Forging Ahead

    Mashinsky said China was way ahead of the US in live streaming technology, something it demonstrated during the Olympic Games when PP Live streamed live to 1.6 million concurrent online viewers.

    He said DigiMeld had used a team of former PP Live programmers to develop its grid-streaming technology that enabled massive numbers of viewers to watch content concurrently.

    It has tested the intelligent streaming solution with NASA Television, including a live internet broadcast trial of a shuttle launch to more than 100,000 live concurrent video streams.

    Essentially, the software harvests viewers’ unused uplink bandwidth to relay stream data and offload the stream traffic from the media servers. The company says this optimizes the overall load balance of the network.

    Unlike traditional CDNs or multicast network solutions, the DigiMeld solution allows each viewer in the grid-streaming network to simultaneously retrieve, view, and share streaming video data with other viewers within a safe and encrypted network.

    This approach differs from P2P file-sharing firms such as BitTorrent, which downloads an entire video file to a viewer’s hard drive.

    Mashinsky said DigiMeld only stores a portion of the streamed content in a viewer’s evanescent memory during viewing.

    This slice of video is continuously overwritten by newly-arriving streams, enhancing efficiency of network bandwidth and increasing copyright protection, including digital rights management (DRM).

    He believes grid-streaming is much more scalable because when the number of concurrent viewers explodes, the viewers will offload most data.


    Bandwidth Congestion Reduced


    Mashinsky said grid-streaming also puts less strain on media servers, while enhancing the QoS (quality of service) when the number of concurrent viewers is huge since more viewers can share data with each other.

    “Unlike BitTorrent, if you are not watching stuff, people are not using your bandwidth,” he said. “We are not over-loading the network with our requirements. It’s the opposite as we are balancing the upstream with the downstream.”

    Mashinsky said the software enabled adaptive streaming which sensed the customer’s bandwidth capacity.

    “It decides if it’s going to use HD or lower quality and links into other streams of people watching the same thing.”

    Opportunities For Content Producers

    Mashinsky stressed that DigiMeld’s grid-streaming was not a replacement for CDNs but could be leveraged within existing infrastructure to create greater benefits.

    DigiMeld was offering services ranging from those for customers that wanted to self-launch, self-publicize and self-monetize to those that relied on DigiMeld for hosting and distribution – or any mix in-between.

    The company has a self-publishing video portal, DigiMeld.tv that allows publishers to create live and on-demand video channels easily and monetize the content through subscription, paid and advertising based services.

    Mashinsky said the service was intended for clients that fell between large media companies, which typically used a CDN service such as Akamai, and peer-to-peer video typically found on YouTube.

    “We are trying to capture the middle of the tail to enable these content people to monetize their content in an easy way,” he said.

    Earlier this week, DigiMeld demonstrated grid-streaming’s worth as a video delivery platform by conducting the first feature-film broadcast over the internet simultaneously with the theatrical release of PublicScope Film’s The Third Jihad.

    Gregory Ross, of PublicScope Film, said DigiMeld TV enabled them to reach worldwide audiences with a television broadcast experience at greatly reduced costs.

    If DigiMeld can achieve that desired combination of quality and cost, there will be a lot more producers knocking on its door.

  • "Better-Then-Blu-ray" Movies For Select SIM2 Few

    SIM2 has teamed up with the US’s Entertainment Experience, LLC to offer just-released movie blockbusters as part of a home-cinema package.



    hdtv.biz-news.com spoke to the high-performance HD projector specialists to find out why they’ve launched what appears to be yet another HD format when the public is still wavering about Blu-ray.

    SIM2 has announced it is starting a “better-than-blu” home-theater package.

    The Italian firm has teamed up with Entertainment Experience, LLC to provide a hardware-software combination offering just-released movie blockbusters.

    Customers will get sent movies that are stored on a hard drive in a DCI format accepted by Hollywood studios.

    The HDD slots into a bespoke media server – a Digital Entertainment Center – and the movie can then be watched on SIM2’s top-selling C3X 1080 projector.

    It might seem a strange decision to launch what appears to be yet another HD format when the public is still wavering about Blu-ray.

    Especially when a huge contention with it is the high price of Blu-ray discs and players.

    But Alan Roser, managing director of SIM2 UK, said the intention was neither to challenge blu-ray nor appeal to the mass-market.

    “It’s not mainstream and it’s not intended as a replacement for Blu-ray,” he said.

    So who will buy the home-theater package?

    Roser said the high-end home theater delivery system was being aimed at its 3-chip DLC projectors rather than less expensive single-chip products.

    He said home theaters of this type were often set up in a dedicated home cinema with a curved and acoustically transparent screen.

    “We do not believe there is any value in this for budget projectors. This is really a high-end service – it take things up to the next stage.”

    With SIM2’s C3X 1080 projector costing around USD $33,000 and US sales in the “low thousands”, it’s definitely a niche market.

    But as the world’s smallest three-chip DLP projector, the C3X 1080HD projector is capable of imaging at up to 1920x1080p at 45 mbp/s.

    To complete the package, customers need to buy a USD $10,000 media server and then pay USD $40 for each movie.

    Major blockbusters will be available within a “short time” of their release – and before they are out on Blu-ray.

    Digital Entertainment, LLC has said that the solution’s movie content ultimately will encompass more than 4000 major titles from multiple studio and distribution partners.

    Commercial Digital-cinema Technologies In The Home

    Roser said while Blu-ray was “absolutely stunning” for 95 per cent of consumers, those with the means to watch HD on giant wide screens had to have the very best – even if that meant a significant investment.

    “The important thing is to get this wonderful technology within a wonderful platform,” he said.

    Roser said the movies will be encoded in a DCI-like format that gives them a higher bitrate and better depth of colour than Blu-ray Disc.

    The package will be available “soon” in the US and it will be rolled out to other markets once complications with international licence agreement schedules are resolved.

    “It’s all a question of time. It’s all about the licensing and getting studios comfortable with content because they are concerned about piracy,” said Roser. “It’s also about keeping theater owners happy.”

    As few people can afford to install this “better-than-blu” home-theater package, that shouldn’t be too difficult.

  • Why Isn't VoIP Videoconferencing Taking Off?

    Voip.biz-news.com spoke to Huw Rees, VP of marketing and sales at Internet-based voice and video telephony company 8×8, to get his feedback on VoIP videoconferencing as a corporate communication tool.
    In these times of budget cuts and soaring travel costs, videoconferencing has been hailed as an effective means of communicating with far-flung employees and customers.

    Companies such as Cisco TelePresence, HP Halo and Lifesize have invested heavily in videoconferencing – or telepresence – technology and offer a range of HD products, some of which cost upwards USD $100,000.

    While these studio-type devices are beyond the range of small businesses, there are an increasing number of affordable desktop IP-based videoconferencing systems on the market.

    With early problems of video quality now overcome, VoIP videoconferencing products would seem to be an ideal corporate communication tool.

    Although more geared to two or three-way conference calls – rather than larger groups – they a provide clear, face-to-face visual link.
    Yet these easy to use, low-cost alternatives have still to catch on.

    Internet-based voice and video telephony company 8×8 introduced its videoconferencing solution, the Packet8 Virtual Office Tango Video Terminal Adapter (VTA), in January.

    However, Huw Rees, vice president of marketing and sales at 8×8, said so far it had not proved to be very popular.
    He said it had been adopted by around 5 per cent of subscribers.

    “It’s not really a runaway success,” he said. “Generally people do not use video to phone a lot of people.

    “They are still a bit unconfortable being in front of a camera rather than having a straight audio call.”

    Headquarted in Santa Clara, California, 8×8 is the second largest stand alone VoIP service provider in the US.

    Benefits Of  Videoconferencing?



    Rees said that, apart from in specific circumstances, business people didn’t see any benefit from using video.
    “We believe that will change, but we have been saying that for several years and haven’t seen it yet,” he said.

    Rees said that he remained to be convinced that even the expensive room systems with giant HD screens were realy going to catch on.

    “Presumably these companies have done their research but it will be interesting to see what happens,” he said.

    “There are certain circumstances where these set-ups work, such as when a business has two teams involved on a project in different parts of the country. But this is very specific.”

    Rees said the VTA, which has a built-in TFT LCD 5” display, has been adapted from an existing consumer product for its business customers.

    He said the main difference was that it was an extension on a PBX rather than being a stand-alone device.

    A phone is supplied with the package, with features such as call transferring built into it.

    Video Quality Not An Issue

    Joan Citelli, direct of corporate communications for 8×8, said video quality had been poor in the early days of IP-based videoconferencing but that was not the case today.

    “Quality is not an issue any longer,” she said. “Videoconferencing does seem to make a lot of sense and you would think that it would allow companies to cut down on commuting and travelling.

    “But it seems that seeing someone on a phone call is not a replacement for meeting and sitting down with them.”

    Have you used a desktop videoconferencing package? We would be interested to hear your comments on videoconferencing and whether it is going to catch on with small business users.

  • Who Said Smartphones Were Just For Fun?

    While the iPhone and Google’s HTC-made G1 may be introducing a more consumer-oriented market to the smartphone, it is still very much a business tool.



    The high-end handsets are being used to carry increasing amounts of confidential data, yet only 35 per cent of companies have a mobile device security strategy in place.



    Smartphone.biz-news.com spoke to Larry Ketchersid, chairman and CEO of Media Sourcery, about how it’s helping enterprises with mobile workforces securely distribute confidential information.

    Epitomised by RIM’s BlackBerry, with its reputation for secure email and text messaging, smartphones remain a powerful data communication tool for companies.

    Larry Ketchersid, chairman and CEO of Media Sourcery, believes that role is likely to gain in importance as more enterprises latch on to the benefits of utilising smartphone-based products.

    But security and data regulations have to be a major consideration when dealing with highly sensitive information.

    His company has developed a secure smartphone application called Mobile Data Messenger (MDM) that allows the sending and receiving of encrypted traffic.

    It securely transfers data files through a network without the need to use E-mail or FTP, or having to burning CDs or DVDs and sending them via snail mail or courier.

    Intended for use in virtually any size of organisation, it also enables companies to do away with the need for significant numbers of paper forms and provides real-time information that can be integrated directly into a data system.

    Ketchersid said the result was secure data transmission – but also increased productivity.

    “Security is great, and it’s required, but when it gets down to doing the ROI, the company and CEO are looking for simplified and improved accuracy and efficiency for their mobile workforce,” he said.

    Ketchersid said the MDM package was written in Java and was already being used by a major US healthcare company on its BlackBerries.

    “Security of patient health information is required in the US by the HIPAA regulations, and our solution solves that and other problems, such as the removal of paper forms, automation of data entry, cleaner data, mobilization of their application and so on, for our customers,” he said.

    Ketchersid said MDM wasn’t restricted to the RIM handsets or the BlackBerry encrypted enterprise server.

    Larry Ketchersid

    The package has been adapted for use on Nokia’s S60 platform at the request of the Finnish phone manufacturer.

    Media Sourcery has also just completed a request by HTC to port the application to Windows Mobile and Ketchersid said he was keeping a close watch on Android to see if it became more enterprise focussed in the future.

    “By having Symbian 60 and RIM, we have the two big ones,” he said. “So we have a pretty large market share.”

    Ketchersid said MDM was initially intended for use in heavily-regulated industries with a need for high security and audit trails.

    All transactions are encrypted and tracked for full regulatory compliance and once securely sent and succesfully received, confidential data is wiped from a smartphone’s memory.

    Simplicity Essential For High Adoption Rates

    Ketchersid said a prime example of the importance of this was in the healthcare industry, which has a mix of technically-trained staff and employees with low technical skills.

    “Our biggest customer in the US is the country’s largest hospice company,” he said.

    “We provide a user interface for healthcare workers to enter patients’ data, which is then sent back to the company’s database and automatically integrated into the back-end health information system.

    “What we have to do where the customer is not as used to smartphones as in other industries is make the application very simple.
    “We are talking about making the transfer from filling out a paper form, yet it has to be something everyone can do.”

    But Ketchersid said feedback from the client was good, adding: “They are loving it and asking us to put all the forms they have on it.”

    The MDM package is either sold as a hosted subscription service or as a software version for companies to manage themselves.

    Ketchersid said the decision on which version to adopt came down to whether IT departments wanted to have complete control of their own systems.

    MDM is also being used in the oil industry where security is an important feature, as are GPS requirements, a timestamp and automatic integration.

    “We have a customer in the oil field professional services that has to go out to remote locations,” said Ketchersid. “What they really need is an audit trail to show they were at a site and did tasks. It’s like a timesheet on steroids.”

    He said there was a growing market for MDM from companies looking for a forms package with Media Sourcery’s security built into it.

    Aside from the healthcare and oil industries, MDM is being used in the legal profession.

    Potential future uses include a law enforcement project where officers are required to record possible evidential data or prove a vehicle was stopped.

    “It’s a pretty open field. We got started in the healthcare market and will continue to have healthcare customers but are expanding out from that,” he said.

    “There are so many possibilities. It’s really going to be where the customer demand comes from.”

  • Web Sites Must Adapt For Mobile Access


    The rising popularity of smartphones and their increasing use to access the internet means web sites must be prepared for effective handheld viewing.

    With the launch of new phones from the likes of Apple, RIM and now HTC, with Google’s Android-based G1, that trend is set to accelerate.

    Chuck Sacco, CEO of mobile marketing experts PhindMe.net, said the G1 represented another step toward complete Web access for people on the go.

    “What we’ve seen with the BlackBerry and the iPhone is a shift away from cell phones to smart phones and the G1 is going to further spur that shift,” he said.

    “With Google’s Android technology also available to other cell phone manufacturers who want to develop smart phones, we anticipate a spike in the number of people using handhelds for the kind of online information they used to access while tethered to the home or office computer.”

    Sacco said most businesses had yet to investigate whether their Web site was accessible to handheld users.

    But an M:Metrics survey showed that 85 per cent of iPhone users accessed the Web for information and were 10 times more likely to search the mobile Web than cell phone owners.

    Jon Cooper, CMO of PhindMe.net, said companies spentd a lot of resources on intricate Web sites that simply didn’t translate to the small screen.

    He said that with the market transitioning toward smart phones, businesses were missing an important opportunity if they didn’t create streamlined versions of their sites that were both accessible to handheld phones and provided information that people on-the-go actually need.

    “Someone looking for lunch isn’t going to care about the history of your restaurant –they need timely information such as where you are and how to get there, what’s on your menu and what’s on special,” he said.

    “You should make that information accessible on their phone to maximize your marketing opportunities.”

  • VOD Will Reach Blu-ray Quality – And Beyond

    hdtv.biz-news.com spoke to Mark Horchler, corporate marketing director with video compression provider ATEME, about its plans to deliver video of Blu-ray quality and beyond.

    The Blu-ray Disc Association doesn’t take kindly to satellite and cable providers claiming their products deliver high definition picture and sound “equal” to that delivered by Blu-ray Disc.

    The trade body recently described just such assertions of equality as irresponsible and misleading to the consumer.

    Yet if the noises coming out of video compression provider ATEME are anything to go by, the BDA might have to get used to it.

    ATEME is a leading provider of MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 video compression technology.

    Its offline and streaming encoders power numerous high-end digital video applications, including mobile TV, Video on Demand (VOD) and IPTV.

    These solutions support both standard and HD content, deployed across any platform – from mobile to Ultra HD.

    Mark Horchler, corporate marketing director with ATEME, said there was room for continued improvement with H.264.
    He said the 3rd generation of the codec had just been released and was 25 per cent more efficient.

    “I think we are reaching near Blu-ray quality,” he said. “I have not made a set by set comparison but we are there.”

    Horchler said image quality was continually improving and the company was experimenting with Ultra High Definition video.

    “That’s the future of high definition,” he said. “H.264 will take us to Blu-ray quality and beyond. Blu-ray is largely based on H.264 technology.”

    France, where ATEME was founded in 1991 and has its head office at Bièvres near Paris, is a strong market for the company.

    It recently announced that its H.264 encoding solutions were now serving over one million French IPTV customers in HD.

    This was as a result of major French broadcasters using the encoders to provide HD video over low bitrates.

    IPTV has reached mass market status in France, largely because of its strong ADSL subscriber base of over 15 million customers, value for money offered by triple play services and healthy competition amongst ISPs.

    By the end of this year, France is expected to have up to six million IPTV subscribers, with a quarter having access to HD channels such as France 2 and M6 that use ATEME’s H.264 encoders.

    “France is a leading market for IPTV and is miles ahead of any other country in Europe, if not the world,” said Horchler.

    However, he said that while there was a lack of HD content in some markets, it was only a matter of time before that changed.

    “The potential for HDTV is huge. We are only at the beginning,” he said.

    “As more and more people adopt HD equipment, flat-screen TVs and so on, there will be a snowball effect. People will ask for more HD content.”

    Every market is different

    While IPTV is particularly strong in France, Horchler said that in other countries the infrastructure favored cable or satellite.

    In the US, where the cable market uses MPEG-2, he said there was a strong argument for using H.264 and he believed cable providers would start adopting it.

    “Our solutions carry over all these platforms,” he said.

    Another area where ATEME saw potential for H.264 was the mobile market, something that fitted well with its partnership agreement with Adobe.

    Horchler said the codec could adapt to various sizes and shapes of media device and had a scaleability that allowed the same video to be broadcast on HDTV or a mobile phone, for instance.

    This was a feature that would fit well with the live broadcast of sporting events.

    The internet offers immense possibilities for video and Horchler said he was confident that H.264 would be able to adapt to new opportunities as they emerged.

    He said there were many interesting applications, such as bundling video with advertising services, that were just beginning to take shape.

    “We are in that space. We work with Adobe Flash and this is compatible with 90 per cent of PCs out there,” he said. “I am sure by next year there will be some crazy idea for a business.

    “But the codec will adapt to the business model. It’s so flexible.”