More on H.264. Echostar is mentioned.
HD video decoders roll, sans VC-1
By Junko Yoshida , EE Times
December 06, 2004 (10:34 AM EST)
URL:
http://www.eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=54800092
TOKYO — First-generation decoders for high-definition video, now sampling from at least three vendors, carry just one of two competing decoding formats. But there seems to be little agreement on what impact, if any, that will have on the video decoder IC market.
The chips, from Broadcom, Conexant and STMicroelectronics, all have H.264, a fully defined standard, but none offers the competing, Windows Media 9-based VC-1 format, which has not yet been ratified by the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers (SMPTE).
Both are highly efficient video compression technologies, designed for high-definition video and broadcast. They are expected to be deployed as key engines in satellite TV, IP set-tops and high-definition DVD recorders scheduled for launch next year.
VC-1's unsettled status is seen as a problem. "VC-1 is still being tweaked," said Michelle Abraham, a senior analyst at In-Stat/MDR, "so IC vendors are waiting for a final version before adding it to their H.264 decoders."
But, citing pressure to bring H.264 products to market, Broadcom Corp.'s Brian Sprague said simply, "We are not going to wait for VC-1." Sprague, senior director of marketing for consumer set-top boxes, said, "We don't know when we'll get the ratified VC-1 document. Without it, we don't know what the VC-1 standard is."
Some are eager to capitalize on the uncertainty of the new video codec standard. DSP companies such as Analog Devices Inc., Texas Instruments Inc. and Equator Technologies Inc., for example, stress the programmability of their respective DSPs.
In reality, though, many leading consumer video chip vendors despair of offering H.264/VC-1 dual-decoder capabilities in their first silicon. All possibilities withered when VC-1's reference software decoder and reference bit streams were delayed until this fall. They added that their decision to go with H.264-only decoder chips was reinforced when it became clear that SMPTE wouldn't just rubber-stamp Microsoft's Windows Media 9 as SMPTE's VC-1.
Despite these misgivings, most chip companies are committed to quietly swallowing extra R&D cost to change their hardware and spin out a separate IC supporting both H.264 and VC-1 — sometime next year.
While emerging IP set-tops and HD-DVD systems demand dual H.264/VC-1 decoding, a new generation of digital satellite set-tops in the United States, for example, requires only H.264.
Abraham, who is senior analyst for converging markets and technologies in multimedia at In-Stat/MDR, said that H.264/VC-1 dual-decoding capability was not an absolute mandate initially, because "there are markets that only want H.264 like EchoStar."
Christos Lagomichos, vice president and general manager of ST's home entertainment group, called the volume of initial requests for H.264 "incredible." He said ST, already sampling its own H.264 decoder chips in this quarter, offers a highly integrated H.264/MPEG-2-based set-top IC that leverages ST's 0.09-micron process technology.
Broadcom and Conexant System Inc.'s H.264-only decoder ICs are based on H.264 decoding cores they bought via acquisitions. Conexant's first H.264-only IC, based on an ARM926EJ-S core with high-definition H.264 hardware video decoder engines and announced last week, was developed by Amphion Semiconductor Ltd. (Belfast, Northern Ireland). Conexant bought Amphion in June.
Broadcom unveils its own H.264-only decoder IC today. The chip is based on an H.264 core originally developed by Sand Video Inc. (Andover, Mass.), which Broadcom bought in April.
Both Conexant (Newport Beach, Calif.) and Broadcom (Irvine, Calif.) provide a so-called "bolt-on" solution in which their H.264 chips, designed to take in transport streams and decode both MPEG-2 and H.264 video, will spit digital data back to a mother chip, a set-top system-on-chip. Although the settop SoC already integrates an MPEG-2 audio/video decoder, "it will be by-passed," Broadcom's Sprague said.
Conexant downplays its two-chip approach. "By providing the H.264 function in this separate IC," said Jeff Crosby, vice president of broadband media processing, "it can be married with our SoCs, which are optimized for the different segments."
Conexant and Broadcom's H.264 chips are made in a 0.13-micron process. Some who particularly insist on supporting H.264 and VC-1 on the same chip look to emerging IP set-tops.
The request for both VC-1 and H.264 in IPTV applications derives largely from the IP set-tops' links with DSL. DSLs imply mediation by a PC, a platform in which Microsoft dominates, Broadcom's Sprague observed.
Scot Robertson, product line manager for media node products at ADI, said the company is working with several OEMs on set-top boxes for advanced codecs in IPTV applications. ADI is demonstrating a preliminary version of the VC-1 decoder on its Blackfin processors, Robertson acknowledged, but said its release depends on the VC-1's spec becoming final. Still, he said, software will let ADI make modifications faster than competitors with hard-wired solutions, who may need to spin new silicon.
VC-1, for Video Codec One, was derived from Microsoft Corp.'s proprietary Windows Media 9 but awaits SMPTE ratification. H.264 was jointly developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group and the International Telecommunication Union. Neither codec appears to be a clear-cut favorite.
"Initially, I think, VC-1 had an edge because Microsoft made sure that it was implemented on all the different processors — when H.264 was still being ratified," said Bill Mauchly, R&D manager at OpGate Ltd. "Now that H.264 is stable and we can show that it can run on something as cost-effective as a Blackfin, the momentum has shifted to H.264."
Matthew Goldman, director of technology at Tandberg Television Inc., said, "For service providers, being 'future proof' is a major contributing factor for having choice in advanced codec technology selection."
OpGate's Mauchly agrees. "It's not that they [service providers] want to show VC-1 on one channel and H.264 on another. They want to be able to put boxes out in the field that won't become obsolete if they choose a different head-end system."
Tandberg's Goldman said issues like "digital rights management and licensing also influence the programming pro-viders' choice of which coding technology is used. As a result of this evaluation, some programming providers prefer H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), others VC-1."
"No trend is evident," he said.
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