Breaking with MPEG
Video technology aims to buck traditional video format
By Karen Brown
from the April 16, 2001 issue of Broadband Week
According to at least one company, digital video service providers should remove their future service rollouts from the traditional MPEG.
Armed with a chip optimized for its propriety codec scheme, New York-based On2.com is trying to demonstrate that message among cable and DSL digital set-top box makers at this month's National Association of Broadcasters confab, claiming it can pump DVD-quality video at 1 megabit per second--far less than the standard 3 Mbps to 8 Mbps for MPEG delivery. But even with that, selling a video industry well entrenched in the established MPEG codecs isn't going to be easy.
Company CEO Douglas McIntyre already knows where his battle lies. "I think it is probably inertia," he says. "If you look at streaming over the set-top box right now you've got the inertia of the MPEG standards, you've got the inertia of how digital rights management is going to be handled," McIntyre says. "So you've got to be able to get in and say to people, 'Look, this is a better product and these are the reasons you want to use it.'"
With that in mind, On2.com is pitching lower bandwidth usage and cost with its codec, originally developed for gaming content. In video, the latest VP4 codec sports 1 Mbps DVD-quality streams--a crucial step to deliver video to homes often stymied by last-mile bandwidth shortages, McIntyre says.
"It allows the industry to sort of cross a hurdle now, and decide whether or not they want to embrace technology that allows them to get television or DVD-quality product which is what the consumer expects," McIntyre says. "You can't give the consumer crap. They won't look at it, they won't pay for it and they won't spend time for it. So if you can cross that boundary and lower the cost of bandwidth utilization, then you have a debate."
Cutting the bandwidth requirements also cuts cost, particularly for content providers. If it costs content providers 5 cents per minute to pay for the bandwidth to stream a 100-minute movie, there's no way they will make a video delivery business work at a cost of less than $5 per movie to the consumer, McIntyre argues.
"You can't go into a business that is negative gross margin like that," he says. "Once you get down to a megabit or below and you can deliver a DVD-quality stream, you are talking about maybe 1.1 cents per minute. That means I can stream a 100-minute movie for say, $1 or $1.25. There's enough gross margin in that so that you at least have a chance to make money."
While there may be a battle for traditional video delivery, On2.com already has made inroads on the Internet, striking licensing deals with Apple and RealNetworks to use its codec in their streaming media players. The company also has its own patented player and server software system.
These Internet deals offer an example of how On2.com's proprietary technology can find market acceptance, McIntyre says.
While not impossible, a non-MPEG codec will be a tough sell for digital set-top box makers, particularly those with a well-established base of older units in the field.
"I think that's something that frankly we are struggling with a little bit," says Bill Wall, technical director of subscriber networks for Scientific-Atlanta. "Clearly, with what is getting to be a larger deployed base of MPEG-2-only set-top boxes, it's going to be very difficult to start deploying other types of codecs, particularly ones that require significant amounts of processing power, like some of the proprietary things like On2 or even MPEG-4 codecs.
"But, on the other hand, if they can offer significant advantages in compression efficiency--that is, you can get the same quality video for significantly lower bit rates--then those can be some driving economics for certain applications, particularly things like video-on-demand where the cost per stream of the service is pretty much proportional to the bit rate you deliver it," he says.
Wall adds that ignoring such technology would be foolhardy, particularly as set-top box technology evolves. "As we move into more and more people having high-speed Internet connections, there's certainly concern about people bypassing the traditional cable infrastructure," Wall says. "So, something we really have to do for our customers is really investigate where these technologies are going and understand them. For certain applications, they may turn out to be appropriate."
One way to lower the resistance is to offer the codec source code to box makers so they may develop their own applications. Such an arrangement would be made on a case by case basis, McIntyre says.
Ultimately, On2.com hopes to convince the video industry that tradition doesn't always win out over innovation. "What you have got to do is be able to go to people and say, 'Look, we understand you like what you've got now,'" McIntyre concludes. "But from my standpoint, I think it is important that people understand that they can look at something else, and there is the possibility of viewing the world differently."
|
