Audio Video News

Last week, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) reported that it has successfully developed what it describes as the world's first system for delivering 1.5 Gbps volume uncompressed HDTV video data in real time over the Internet. NTT says it will exhibit the Linux-based system during the International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition (InterBEE 2001) at the Nippon Convention Center from November 14 to 16, 2001.

According to the company, the system, developed by its Network Innovation Laboratories, uses PCs with HDTV interfaces and super-high-speed network interfaces. NTT says that the system was deployed in Tokyo between the NTT Musashino R&D Center and the University of Electro-Communications.

A company release says, "HDTV images were transmitted over an IP Internet connection using a 2.4-Gbps fiber-optic line. The processing capacity of a 1.5-Gbps uncompressed HDTV video data stream can support up to 70 HDTV-quality MPEG-2 streams (22 Mbps per stream) or 150 to 300 DVD-quality streams (5-10 Mbps per stream)."

NTT adds that the system consists of commercially available PCs and HDTV interfaces, running on Linux. The company says a number of speed enhancement techniques were applied to the operating system and the application program to support Gbps-class streaming data, including optimizing the internal bus scheduling and memory access, and parallel processing using multiple processors. As a bonus, NTT says the system will eventually be capable of manipulating the processing of video content.

NTT stresses that it will continue to assess the protocol processing of Gbps-class streaming data over the trial system, while at the same time exploring the applicability of the system to caches, servers, and mirror sites with the ultimate aim of building large-capacity streaming content delivery networks.