NTT Docomo Inc said Monday that it will license a software for decoding HEVC, the new international standard for video coding, in March. Docomo’s HEVC decoding software is the world’s first of its kind for Full HD playback on smartphones.
HEVC was jointly finalized by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as ISO/IEC 23008-2 and the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) as H.265 on Jan 25. It is the next-generation standard succeeding H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, the current format used widely in audio and visual equipment and mobile devices. Compared with MPEG-4 AVC, compressed video can be downloaded twice as fast, or higher-quality video can be streamed at conventional speeds. Docomo’s HEVC decoding software allows smooth playback of Full HD on smartphones without delays or interruptions. Furthermore, for playback on personal computers the software enables real-time decoding of 4K UHDTV, which offer four times the resolution of Full HD.
Docomo will license its new decoding software to facilitate the development and widespread adoption of HEVC in many fields, including mobile video services. Docomo itself will use HEVC to broadly reduce communication network load and offer higher-quality mobile video services for smartphones and tablets.
Docomo played a leading role in the new standard’s development beginning in 2007, including proposing the concept and technical requirements of using HEVC for mobile video services. Beginning in late 2011, Docomo verified feasibility by demonstrating some of the world’s first and most advanced real-time HEVC software decoding on tablets and smartphones.
Docomo’s HEVC decoding software will be demonstrated at the NTT R&D Forum in Tokyo from Feb 14 to 15 and Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona, Spain from Feb 25 to 28.
© Japan Today
7 Comments
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TakahiroDomingo
funny: just made a search on "HEVC", and the first link is wiki, and guess what: nowhere to be seen is the word docomo
basroil
TakahiroDomingoFeb. 05, 2013 - 08:41AM JST
They aren't even going to license anything until March, so it likely isn't ready . Once it's there it'll be listed as one of many decoders... on the other hand, FFMpeg library has had h265 decoding and encoding since July of last year, so Docomo software engineers must be awfully incompetent if ffmpeg supported it after just two months of coding and fixes (compared to 6 years in docomo's case).
Knox Harrington
Yeah, harder, faster, better stronger, right. All good and well but it takes time. Here was an interesting take on HEVC:
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2013/01/hevc-adoption-at-least-five-years-away-for-consumer-content-services.html
Japanese people do like to buy anything new, so maybe it might roll out faster here?
Elbuda Mexicano
Everybody, not just Japanese, like to TRY and maybe even BUY anything new, if it is BETTER than your last gadget, but look at Windows 8?? Big flop! Real new and even the JAPANESE do not want to waste their money on that crap!
nath
True, the Japanese would be one of the first to try out new technologies in the hopes of bringing in more customers ... but the thing is, docomo is just a bit too pricey for the average wage earner.
I always wanted a BlackBerry or even a Galaxy phone...
moomoochoo
Make it open source and then I'll call this news.
Paul Arola
@ Basroil,
FFMPEG most definitely does not have H265HEVC encode or decode support. Libav (which worked from ffmpeg) has a partially working intra only HEVC decoder, but nothing else.