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A picture is worth a
thousand words, and a video is worth a million words. Multimedia contents
and communications are gaining popularity with advancement in technology,
device affordability and broadband connectivity. Features like
"Push-to-Video", video downloading and streaming, or digital
broadcasting would be a common place in not-too-distant future.
However, while PC's
can support computing power and bandwidth requirements of multimedia
contents and communications, wireless devices will continue to lack
computing power, adequate battery supply, and reliable WAN bandwidth. These
devices need to be designed under certain constraints that PC's and laptops
are not subjected to -- size, battery power, cost, CPU performance and
bandwidth. This challenge is acute especially when the video application
has to deliver real-time encoding (such as Push-to-Video) instead of
decoding previously encoded content (MPEG4 or H.264). Recognizing special
needs of the wireless device market, many vendors are looking to ITU-T
VCEG’s H.264 (otherwise known as ISO MPEG4 Part 10) as solutions.
Although H.264
promises high quality video and high compression rate, their full-featured
CODEC (especially encoder) has been very difficult goals to achieve on
PC’s, let alone mobile devices, due to CPU resource requirements. For
example, it takes 1/2 second per frame (unacceptably slow) to encode a QVGA
video stream using H.264 reference code on a Pentium 2.8 GHz computer.
Vendors are now
challenged with hard choices. Since it is currently extremely difficult to
achieve all three objectives – high compression rate, high video
quality, and speed - one or two of the three factors have to be sacrificed.
Most mobile-solution vendors end up implementing basic H.264 by sacrificing
compression rate and frame-count due to severe processor and network
limitations. We expect to see in the market many "partially
implemented" H.264 in the near future.
iMaster
iMaster develops an ultra
advanced video CODEC for wireless devices. iMaster
owns a patented algorithm that can deliver "real-time" 15 FPS
encoding / decoding performance even under the most demanding limitations
of wireless network and low-powered devices. In our desktop computer
benchmark tests, iMaster delivers some 40X to 100X faster speed compared to
a publicly available H.264 reference source code. iMaster
accomplishes this while still meeting the same high video quality and
narrowband requirements. iMaster is an ultimate
video CODEC that H.264 was meant to accomplish without compromising video
quality and compression.
Our differentiator
is that we are the fastest and highest quality H.264 encoder designed for
mobile devices, which enables "Push-to-Video". We believe
real-time video encoding capability will create NEW applications instead of
merely moving traditional video conferencing to a handset.
Push-to-Video
The mobile video
encoding demand will come entirely from new applications. The initial
market is definitely in Asia, and then Europe, and
the US
will be lagging by 2 years. Ring-tone and mobile game applications are good
examples of early "skepticism" in the US,
while the US
public (mostly younger generations) eventually adopts similar applications.
Here are some
examples of compelling Push-to-Video uses:
* My real estate
broker friends are excited about "showing quick previews of new
listings" to their busy clients by use of real-time video. Each video
preview can save an hour of travel time for a client.
* A home improvement
contractor can show his client a kitchen cabinet with a minor change in
plan before he picks it up.
* Partying teens can
entice their friends to join a party by flashing live video of the party.
* A wife shows a
video image of a sale item before she picks it up for her husband on a
non-refundable purchase.
* A VP of Sales is
checking on field sales reps as to where they are and what they are doing
absent from the office.
These are all NEW
applications of video. Video phones will NOT replace existing serious
camcorder applications such as a wedding or a birthday.
Summary
Wireless video
telephony market will be huge (first in Asia).
500 million camera phones will ship in 2007. Some of those phones are
already equipped with video sensors to capture video images. iMaster will pioneer the new “Push-to-Video”
wave. The current industry solutions are inadequate to spark a fire for this
new application. iMaster’s ultra high
performance solutions now make it truly possible to compel new users. With
40X - 100X performance advantage over a standard H.264 reference code,
iMaster offers unique and novel technology that is very hard to copy. iMaster develops both H.264-standard-compliant version
and faster-and-cheaper proprietary version. We plan to submit iMaster as a
mobile solution standard. With partnerships and help of experienced
advisory board members, iMaster management is capable of realizing its
vision and creating a new market.
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