e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

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August 10, 2001 / Briefs Archives
On2's VP4 Codec To Hit Japan Market
By Ryan Naraine


Streaming media play On2 Technologies (AMEX:ONT) is taking its highly touted VP4 video compression technology to Japan in a licensing deal with Tokyo-based Media Commerce Solutions Ltd.

On2 said the approximate value of the Media Commerce deal is $620,000, with the potential for licensing royalties at a later stage. The deal calls for the VP4 technology to be integrated into Media Commerce's set-top box program.

The VP4 codec is hailed as the only compression technology to break the 1-megabit barrier for delivering 60 field-per-second digital video. It delivers at 700-kilobits, allowing movie quality video streams at lower data rates, yet with comparable quality to the MPEG-2 protocol.

Separately, On2 announced plans to release an open source version of the earlier VP3.2 video compression algorithm. The company said the licenses and source code would be available at several websites within this quarter. It did not say which sites the code would be released on.

On2 chief technology officer Dan Miller said the contribution of the VP3.2 code to the open source community marks the first time a competitive video codec has been made available in this fashion.

"We feel that it is essential to the success of the digital revolution that these enabling technologies not remain locked into closed, proprietary systems," Miller said.

"By open-sourcing (the technology) now, we hope to break the logjam of incompatible formats and heavily encumbered so-called standards, promoting a true common format that is open, documented, and freely available to all."

http://asia.internet.com/briefs/article/0,3916,4141_862921,00.html