Given the South Korean mobile communications market is one of the world's most competitive and innovative, it's not surprising to hear that Samsung and SK Telecom have taken the lead on another important enabler of high quality mobile video, MPEG Media Transport (MMT) technology.
The current generation mobile broadcast technology has a lag of at least 15 seconds when compared to today's cable or IPTV broadcast technologies. SK Telecom and Samsung say they've come up with a way to reduce that by 80 percent, to clock in at just 3 seconds lag time.
The breakthrough is achieved based on the emerging MPEG MMT standard, which is evolving to deliver HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding, the successor to H.264) over IP, reports Rethink Wireless.
The South Korean companies tested their system over SK Telecom's LTE-A network using its Btv video streaming platform. They hope to commercialize the technology next year. They also want to standardize the technology through groups like 3GPP.
"True Real Time Mobile Streaming resolves technical challenges of providing high quality live video streaming over mobile networks without latency," SK Telecom's head of network R&D, Park Jin-hyo, said in a statement. "SK Telecom will put more efforts to strengthen its mobile network service quality by developing innovative and advanced technologies."
MPEG MMT for heterogeneous environments--fixed and mobile with different signal formats and screen resolutions--is being developed as part of the ISO/IEC 23008 standard, notes Rethink Wireless. The initiative aims to address weaknesses in the current MPEG-2 TS standard for packetizing audiovisual data streams and multiplexing them into one delivery stream, the report said, adding that challenges include a small and rigid packet size which is imperfect for IP-based delivery of 4K and 8K video.
Various companies are working on different features and use cases for the platform. NTT of Japan, for one, has been a major contributor, particularly in the area of advanced FEC (forward error correction codes), and in applying the standard to remote collaboration systems for content creation, said Rethink Wireless.
SK Telecom and its counterparts in South Korea have a reputation for firsts. SK Telecom rolled out the world's first LTE-A network with carrier aggregation in June 2013, and it's actively involved in 5G research and development.
For more:
- see this Rethink Wireless article
- see The Korea Herald article
- see this Telecom Lead story
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