Broadcast International Inks Deal With IBM For Breakthrough Video Compression Technology

[The following is a release from Broadcast International]

December 12, 2007

Broadcast International today announced a new license agreement with IBM. The agreement covers BI's patented CodecSys video compression software running on IBM's Cell Broadband Engine(TM) (Cell/B.E.) multi-core processor and the IBM BladeCenter(R) QS21 server. The combined technologies promise to change the video distribution world by making it possible for cable, satellite or IPTV providers to deliver live HDTV at compression levels four to six times higher than is currently possible. For example, HD video could be delivered at 3 Mbps (in h.264) instead of 19.4 Mbps (in MPEG-2) transport stream. CodecSys, bundled with BladeCenter QS21, will be targeted at customers seeking digital content distribution infrastructure solutions such as video backhaul (capturing camera feeds from one location, e.g., a stadium, and moving it back to the studio). The key building blocks of this solution, the multiple codecs running on Cell/B.E., will also be made available through licensing to IBM business partners such as OEM equipment manufacturers to integrate with their traditional encoding solutions and improve their flexibility beyond traditional digital signal processors. "This combination of IBM's incredibly powerful Cell chip and BI's completely new approach to encoding, using multiple expert encoders in parallel, will change the entire economics of the video industry overnight," said Peter White, CEO of Rethink Research Associates in the U.K., and contributing analyst for Multimedia Research Group. Rod Tiede, CEO of Broadcast International, said, "The power of these technologies working together marks an industry milestone and a true technology breakthrough. The integrated solution will be able to deliver live, HD video at under 3Mbps, and in the future, we expect to take that all the way down to 1.5 Mbps." "Our clients face a formidable challenge of meeting the growing consumer demand for HD, while trying to minimize their bandwidth costs," said Dick Anderson, general manager, IBM Media & Entertainment. "Pairing the Cell/B.E. and BladeCenter QS21 with CodecSys offers them a powerful and cost-effective alternative." Patented, multi-codec approach Broadcast International has patented the unique CodecSys approach of using multiple expert codecs rather than single, general-purpose codecs. By automatically switching between specialized codecs, choosing the best one for a particular frame or video sequence, CodecSys is able to reduce video bandwidth requirements more than 80% for HD video over all types of delivery platforms including broadcast, cable, IPTV, wireless and the Internet. The IBM Cell/B.E. processor accelerates the CodecSys codec-switching process, providing a platform for nearly unlimited processing power and video compression capabilities. BI's software is based on an open software architecture that can accommodate new standards, such as H.264, as well as new specialized codecs as they come onto the market. The IBM Cell/B.E. processor hardware platform is also highly programmable and scalable, enabling customers to add additional processing power by simply adding extra processors or "blades." The revolutionary Cell/B.E. processor is a breakthrough design featuring a central processing core, based on IBM's industry leading Power Architecture(TM) 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 PLAYSTATION(R)3, Toshiba's Cell/B.E. Reference Set, a development tool for Cell/B.E. products, and Mercury Computer's hardware boards and MultiCore Plus(TM), a software development kit. The IBM BladeCenter QS21 is based on Cell/B.E. to offer clients extreme performance to accelerate compute-intensive tasks like video distribution and delivers twice the memory and density for order-of-magnitude performance gains over the previous model. IBM and BI have been involved in a co-development effort since April 2007, to integrate the Cell/B.E. processor with CodecSys. At IBC in Amsterdam in September, Broadcast International and IBM demonstrated the solution publicly for the first time.

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