First Public Demo of New Video Compression Technology

The encoder features BI's patented CodecSys compression technology on the IBM BladeCenter QS20 "Cell Blade." The powerful combination of technologies significantly improves performance and reduces costs associated with video compression, while delivering live HD video at less than half the bandwidth normally required.

Industry pundits agree that a crisis in bandwidth is looming as user demand for video, particularly HD programming, accelerates. Cable providers are under intense pressure, but other delivery platforms such as broadcast TV, satellite, telcos and wireless all face a similar challenge.

"We expect to cause quite a stir at IBC when we show pre-encoded HD streams at under 3Mbs, as well as real-time HD encoding at similarly remarkable bandwidths," said Rod Tiede, Broadcast International CEO. "That's the capability we gain by putting our CodecSys multi-codec encoding software on IBM's Cell/B.E. multi-core processing hardware; the two technologies are ideally suited to each other. In addition to significantly increased processing power, the IBM platform is highly scalable and programmable, which enables users to customize and upgrade in a way that has never before been possible."

The CodecSys system utilizes and switches between optimized, expert codecs for specific video content, such as bright, dark, fast-motion, or slow-motion scenes, resulting in the highest quality video at the lowest possible bandwidth. Another major benefit of this combination of technologies is that new codecs can be incorporated into the system as needed, virtually eliminating encoding hardware obsolescence.

"Broadcasters face the universal challenge of meeting the growing demand for HD, while trying to minimize their bandwidth costs," said Dick Anderson, general manager for IBM Media and Entertainment. "The Cell/B.E. processor is uniquely positioned to address compute-intensive, high quality media processing requirements. Our cooperation with Broadcast International shows how rich this capability can be."

The revolutionary Cell/B.E. processor is a breakthrough design featuring a central processing core, based on IBM's industry leading Power Architecture technology, and eight synergistic processing elements (SPE). Cell/B.E. "supercharges" compute-intensive applications, offering fast performance for computer entertainment, virtual-reality, wireless downloads, real-time video chat, interactive TV shows and other "image-hungry" computing environments. The groundbreaking Cell/B.E. processor also appears in products such as Sony Computer Entertainment's PLAYSTATION3, Toshiba's Cell/B.E. Reference Set, a development tool for Cell/B.E. products, and Mercury Computer's hardware boards and MultiCore Plus, a software development kit.