Audio Video News

MPEG-4 is getting plenty of attention from high-tech companies these days. On March 27, a joint venture involving the technology was announced in Tokyo by seven major electronics and technology companies.

Called e-BOX Corporation, the group plans to use MPEG-4 encoding and decoding to deliver "enhanced video-on-demand and interactive TV services" to Japanese subscribers. Comcast Cable Communications, Inc., the third largest cable company in the US, is advising the partners—Pioneer Corporation, Sharp Corporation, National Semiconductor Corporation, Sigma Designs, CMC Magnetics, iVAST, Inc., and Modern VideoFilm, Inc. on the technical requirements of the system. If field trials are successful, Comcast hopes to roll out MPEG-4–based video services in the North American market as early as next year.

"Comcast is continuously investigating new technologies that will enhance its service offering to customers," said Brad Dusto, chief technology officer of Comcast Cable. "The consortium's approach of providing an end-to-end solution promises to provide us with a complete package to deliver new and exciting video services. We are looking forward to working with the consortium to help define and test the new system."

According to the announcement, MPEG-4 technology enables video-on-demand "with the look and feel of interactive DVD." It also supports "e-commerce, bandwidth-efficient delivery of high definition television, and high-capacity personal video recording (PVR)." An extremely attractive aspect of compression-efficient MPEG-4 is that it allows bandwidth-intensive services without requiring an infrastructure upgrade by cable providers.

"Our joint venture is a consortium of companies that have leading-edge products and services targeted towards the future of television entertainment," said Dr. Masao Sugimoto, executive corporate engineering adviser of Pioneer Corporation. "By combining these capabilities, we have the ability to provide the industry with the technology and content it needs to bring fresh and exciting entertainment to subscribers." Each member of the joint venture will provide products and services reflecting its area of expertise, the announcement stated.

Almost simultaneously with the e-BOX announcement came a related one from the eastern side of the Pacific Rim. The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) has revealed a licensing plan for MPEG-4 audio compression that will avoid any conflicts with a linked video technology. The licensing program has been agreed to by participating members Dolby Laboratories, Nokia, AT&T, Sony Corporation, and Fraunhofer IIS, and proposes fees amounting to approximately 50¢ for each channel used by consumers who wish to receive "streaming" music. Fees for professional purposes would be approximately $2 per channel. ISMA was founded two years ago by Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, IBM, Philips Electronics, Sun Microsystems, and several other, less well known companies.

Serving the public? ISMA stated that maximum annual fees for PC-based software would be no more than $250,000 annually for encoders and $25,000 for decoders. MPEG LA, a competing licensing group of 18 patent holders, has made a similar proposal, but its maximum fee projections reach much higher—as much as $1 million per year for commercial users. Many media companies have complained that proposed fees are too high. ISMA has suggested a fee of 2¢ per hour for all MPEG-4–encoded video content.

MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Coding is hoped by its proponents to offer some serious competition to Microsoft's Windows Media and RealNetworks' RealAudio formats, both of which enable streaming of audio through file-compression schemes. MPEG-4 technology will be a focus at the upcoming National Cable and Telecommunications Association conference, to be held in New Orleans, May 5–8.