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Matsushita to Market 5-Mbit/s Broadband Tuner
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There has been a sharp rise in subscribers to broadband networks such as asynchronous digital subscriber line (ADSL) and fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) over the last year, reaching about 2.83 million installations by the end of 2001. Considering the explosive spread of broadband, it would be reasonable to expect the video distribution business to take off, too.
While subscriber counts are rising fast, however, the video distribution business has still not achieved take-off velocity. At present, the only images offered are free-of-charge, such as promotional video-clips for movies and concerts.
1 Mbit/s Coding Speed
Content providers cite as one of the major obstacles the poor quality of the images, for which few viewers would be willing to pay.
The coding speed used for current movie content is between several hundred kbits/s and about 1 Mbit/s. This range is demanded by the processing performance of the central processing unit (CPU) in home personal computers, most of which simply can't handle higher speeds.
Manufacturers involved in streaming technology development claim that coding technology has improved enormously, and that a coding speed of 500 kbits/s to 1 Mbit/s can achieve an image quality equivalent to that of digital videodisks (DVD). Content providers disagree, though: "Even with a 1-Mbit/s coding speed, the quality is still only about as good as an analog VCR playing back images recorded on tape at 3x speed. The technology is still at the experimental level, and we need better image quality. Unless it can be enjoyed on television as easily as VCR or DVD images, broadband content distribution will never grow to match broadcasting or package software sales."
In response to this situation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd of Japan has developed a set-top box (see Fig) capable of handling communication rates of up to 5 Mbits/s. It plans to ship the new box in the fall of 2002.
It is designed to allow video content to be viewed on television receivers instead of on the personal computer (PC). With support for up to 5 Mbits/s speeds, image quality is on a par with that of television broadcasting images.
The set-top box has an internal television tuner and hard disk drive (HDD), and can record images on the hard disk. Viewers can record a television program onto the HDD for later viewing, eliminating the differences between television and broadband content.
Network Problems
Even with a new terminal, though, it is still not certain that content providers will be able to offer image video distribution with image quality on a par with that offered by television.
The network linking the distribution server to the user terminal must be designed to handle that speed, or streaming will be impossible even with higher-speed coding. If the network is the bottleneck, causing lost frames and delays, it would be impossible to provide customer satisfaction even with higher speed terminals. Download-and-play solutions would make it possible to distribute highquality images, but there are still concerns about copyright protection. As one content provider engineer said, "The problems with the network are deeper than those with the terminal, and we are much more interested in resolving the network problems first."
by Chikashi Horikiri
(April 2002 Issue, Nikkei Electronics Asia)
While subscriber counts are rising fast, however, the video distribution business has still not achieved take-off velocity. At present, the only images offered are free-of-charge, such as promotional video-clips for movies and concerts.
1 Mbit/s Coding Speed
Content providers cite as one of the major obstacles the poor quality of the images, for which few viewers would be willing to pay.
The coding speed used for current movie content is between several hundred kbits/s and about 1 Mbit/s. This range is demanded by the processing performance of the central processing unit (CPU) in home personal computers, most of which simply can't handle higher speeds.
Manufacturers involved in streaming technology development claim that coding technology has improved enormously, and that a coding speed of 500 kbits/s to 1 Mbit/s can achieve an image quality equivalent to that of digital videodisks (DVD). Content providers disagree, though: "Even with a 1-Mbit/s coding speed, the quality is still only about as good as an analog VCR playing back images recorded on tape at 3x speed. The technology is still at the experimental level, and we need better image quality. Unless it can be enjoyed on television as easily as VCR or DVD images, broadband content distribution will never grow to match broadcasting or package software sales."
In response to this situation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd of Japan has developed a set-top box (see Fig) capable of handling communication rates of up to 5 Mbits/s. It plans to ship the new box in the fall of 2002.
It is designed to allow video content to be viewed on television receivers instead of on the personal computer (PC). With support for up to 5 Mbits/s speeds, image quality is on a par with that of television broadcasting images.
The set-top box has an internal television tuner and hard disk drive (HDD), and can record images on the hard disk. Viewers can record a television program onto the HDD for later viewing, eliminating the differences between television and broadband content.
Network Problems
Even with a new terminal, though, it is still not certain that content providers will be able to offer image video distribution with image quality on a par with that offered by television.
The network linking the distribution server to the user terminal must be designed to handle that speed, or streaming will be impossible even with higher-speed coding. If the network is the bottleneck, causing lost frames and delays, it would be impossible to provide customer satisfaction even with higher speed terminals. Download-and-play solutions would make it possible to distribute highquality images, but there are still concerns about copyright protection. As one content provider engineer said, "The problems with the network are deeper than those with the terminal, and we are much more interested in resolving the network problems first."
by Chikashi Horikiri
(April 2002 Issue, Nikkei Electronics Asia)
