A Report on the Technology Tests of Advanced Video Services – MPEG2

This paper will describe the technology testing of Advanced Video Services based on MPEG2 compression technology. — It will summarize the existing service capability provided by encoders and decoders utilizing Main Profile@Main Level operating at bit rates compatible with the existing telecommunications networks, and emerging technologies for cable TV and telco distribution, including MMDS, DBS, HFC, SDV and ADSL, including transport over ATM, and interfaces required for storage in file servers such as SCSI2, FDDI, HIPPI, Fibre Channel and Firewire. These services are provided on both commercial networks such as DirectTV, and trial networks such as Pacific Bell Video Services Multipoint Multichannel Distribution Service network in Southern California. — It will also describe the existing state of the art MPEG2 equipment, which is based on chip sets provided by C-Cube, IBM, and others, including the video/audio multiplexing stage, the compression engine and the network multiplex stage. Board level approaches include VME bus and PCI bus backplanes. Issues such as the use of program streams and transport streams for different applications will be addressed. — The applications for this technology today require near-broadcast quality video and audio, and include entertainment television, distance learning, business conferencing and telemedicine. Other applications include MPEG2 over Inter- and Intra-nets, interactive MPEG, as well as other industrial and government applications, including teleradiology, remote surveillance and readiness training including battle simulation. A discussion of the subjective versus objective evaluation of picture quality for digital video will describe the latest approach of standards bodies called “correlation”, and include, for example, studies done of the impact of compression on the accuracy of teleradiology. — The paper will also address emerging applications for MPEG technology, especially for the entertainment industry's higher quality requirements for MPEG authoring systems, including DVD mastering, content compression for server distribution, remote review and editing and multimedia. The enhancements required for these applications include the utilization of component digital video and audio, 4:2:2 processing (the so-called professional profile), video preprocessing, selectable I, B, P Group of Pictures, and scalability. — Finally, a discussion of MPEG2 technology for Advanced Television formats, such as progressive scan displays and HD Television, such as the processing impact of scalable compression ratios for different exhibition formats.

Published

1997-02

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/M00217

ISBN

978-1-61482-926-3