Demonstration of User-Aware Video Delivery Driving Significant Data-Rate Reductions with No Perceptible Impact on Video Quality
BARCELONA, Spain — (BUSINESS WIRE) — February 25, 2013 — InterDigital, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDCC), a wireless research and development company, today unveiled revolutionary technology that combines viewer sensing with adaptive video streaming, utilizing the limits of a viewer’s visual acuity as well as environmental and other viewing conditions to deliver significant bandwidth savings and to optimize user experience.
The premise is straightforward: while various devices like handsets and TVs deliver ever more impressive image quality and pixel density, there are established limits to the capability of the human eye to perceive excess resolution. InterDigital’s user-aware video streaming technology senses the presence and proximity of viewers and their viewing conditions, and adapts the video streaming to deliver the best possible viewable image while minimizing bandwidth consumption. The demonstration at Mobile World Congress will take place at InterDigital’s booth in Hall 7, Stand 7G111, and involves user-aware video streaming on both mobile handsets and in a home setting, with full-screen televisions.
“Current video delivery systems do not take into account the user’s location relative to the display and the viewing conditions. Using multiple sensors on the mobile device, we estimate user presence, attention level, mobility, distance from the screen and illumination level and use sophisticated yet low complexity algorithms to optimize the video rate and user experience. User awareness combined with our Mobile Video technologies enables gains that are an order of magnitude higher than what can be achieved with stand-alone wireless optimization or video optimization,” said Dr. Ariela Zeira, Vice President, Innovation Labs, who heads the company’s multimedia research efforts.
User-aware video streaming is one of several advanced research efforts under InterDigital’s Mobile Video project. Other elements of the Mobile Video project include:
Video Adaptation to Network Events: Adaptation to the network makes the video encoder or streaming client aware of changes in the wireless network, to improve rate selection and ultimately achieve better bandwidth efficiency. Those changes include handover events, physical layer transmission failures, channel quality indications and network congestion indicators.
Hybrid delivery: Applicable to both streaming and real-time video, hybrid delivery enables robust delivery of video when there are multiple channels available, such as in Wi-Fi and cellular combined access, or a multiband single access. The technology maximizes the chances of delivering a high quality of experience.
Joint Rate/Quality Adaptation: Video content may include “easy” and “difficult” scenes to encode. As a result, conventional encoding may produce either streams with consistent rate but fluctuating quality, or streams with consistent quality but fluctuating rate. InterDigital technology manages adaptation based on both rate and quality, delivering higher and more consistent quality of experience.
About InterDigital®
InterDigital develops fundamental wireless technologies that are at the core of mobile devices, networks, and services worldwide. We solve many of the industry's most critical and complex technical challenges, inventing solutions for more efficient broadband networks and a richer multimedia experience years ahead of market deployment. InterDigital has licenses and strategic relationships with many of the world's leading wireless companies. Founded in 1972, InterDigital is listed on NASDAQ and is included in the S&P MidCap 400® index.
InterDigital is a registered trademark of InterDigital, Inc.
For more information, visit: www.interdigital.com.
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InterDigital, Inc.
Patrick Van de Wille, +1-858-210-4814
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