Envivio further optimises Mobile TV quality

Envivio have announced their new Elite Compression™ enhancement for their award-winning 4Caster C4 and M2 mobile TV encoders – basically another opmtimisation tuning the media playback on popular mobile devices. It gets deployed at the operator headend, and works within standards, so no changes to the subscriber handsets. Elite Compression will debut at the CTIA Wireless show, which IntoMobile is attending, by the way!

Elite Compression bridges the performance gap that currently exists in the mobile streaming market by targeting the many mass market mobile devices which use their central processor to decode media content. While H.263 and MPEG-4 Simple Profile compression are well matched to the capabilities of older or entry level mobile devices, they underutilize the performance of modern mid-range handsets using processors such as the ARM11. This prevents subscribers from enjoying the full media playback capability of their new devices. Conversely the more complex H.264 Baseline Profile is suitable only for premium handsets with dedicated video decoding hardware as it overloads even the newest mid-range devices resulting in low frame rate video and an unacceptable user experience.

Elite Compression fills the significant void between those extremes by enabling mainstream mid-range devices, which comprise the majority of handsets in use, to deliver their optimum video and audio playback experience. Elite Compression is based on the H.264 standard, making it compatible with the standard media players provided by companies such as PV, NXP and RealNetworks that are already installed on millions of handsets.

The addition of Elite Compression takes place entirely at the headend, making it easy for operators to deploy. Its effect, however, is far-reaching and offers dramatic improvements in mobile TV performance across the broadest spectrum of mobile devices. Typical competing encoding solutions rely on single vendor, proprietary technologies which force operators to update every individual handset to maintain compatibility. In contrast, Envivio Elite Compression is based on the H.264 open standard. As a result it does not require special handset players or any handset upgrades at all to enhance the performance on today’s most popular and widely used phones. The net result is an instant improvement in the quality of experience for an operator’s existing subscriber base.

Encoding is key part of the mobile content delivery process – if it isn’t up to scratch, you can kiss your user experience goodbye. With Envivio’s long-standing experience in this area, Operators who deploy this I think should have some pretty satisfied customers!

You can check out Envivio’s site here.
[Via: streamingmedia.com]