Petteri Pyyny
23 Feb 2003 11:58
American TV network ABC and British BBC have both licensed video compression technology from On2 Technologies to use it to transmit TV-quality video footage from reporters in remote locations.
On2 Technologies became a familiar name to masses in last year when it donated its older video compression technology, VP3 to Xiph.org (same organization which oversees various Ogg projects) and open-sourced it.
Now, two major TV players have adopted On2's newer, propietary format, VP5 to use in "real life", to transmit video footage over the Internet from journalists to their home TV studios. BBC plans to use the system in Middle East for its reporters to provide newsfeeds from places where setting up a satellite link and to transmit the data over analog signals would be less practical solution.
On2 seem to have crawled into the video world from the backdoor, when MPEG-4 advocates (such as Real and Apple) are fighting against Microsoft's WMV technology on all areas of video delivery.
Source: News.com