Audio Video News

The film industry is going to hate this. A Santa Monica technology company has announced a digital video compression scheme that supposedly can increase the data density of ordinary DVDs by three to ten times.

The claimed result is five full-length movies on a single disc—the video equivalent of dozens of MP3 songs on a recordable CD, but without a loss of quality. The company, Zeros & Ones, Inc. announced July 11 that it had successfully completed what it called "Phase Two" of the development of "MC-10, a revolutionary new high quality digital video compression engine." The technique reportedly yields better image quality than standard MPEG2.

Z&O is applying for patents in several areas related to the compression technology and hopes to leverage the invention for commercial use. Among the potential applications are recordable DVDs in camcorders, computers, personal video recorders, and satellite TV receivers. The company also expects to exploit the technique for use in transmitting motion pictures to theaters, and for broadband video conferencing, video telephony, and wireless communications.

Zeros & Ones describes itself as a "transmedia holding company with digital convergence operations in content, technology, and production." The company has animation studios as well as a technical development division. A public demonstration of MC-10 compressed video will take place soon, according to the announcement.