AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Sept. 12, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IBC 2013 -- Rovi Corporation (Nasdaq:ROVI), driving digital entertainment innovation, today announced it is making significant progress on its promise to deliver an end-to-end solution for the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) compression standard — from professional and consumer content creation to solutions to facilitate secure delivery and multi-screen enhanced playback. A key part of the end-to-end solution is the MainConcept® HEVC SDK. Designed for the professional market, MainConcept is one of the first broadly available solutions for streamlining the integration of HEVC, or H.265, into video applications and services in multiple environments.
Since releasing the solution at NAB in June, Rovi has continued to update the MainConcept HEVC SDK with new features and refinements. As well as working to continue to improve HEVC format quality and bitrate savings, the latest SDK v1.1 update adds real-time 4K decoding and support for HM 11 anchor streams. These enhancements are designed to reduce delivery costs by increasing the ease with which high-quality video content is delivered through existing cable, Internet and wireless channels and dramatically decreasing content conversion times.
"HEVC is vital to the future of digital video and the MainConcept SDK is a critical piece of a broader Rovi development effort designed to help accelerate market adoption throughout the entire video value chain," said Dr. Kanaan Jemili, senior vice president, product management, Rovi Corp. "We believe the advancements we have made with the MainConcept SDK will help to further accelerate third-party development, as well as support Rovi's overall goal of delivering an end-to-end solution for HEVC and Ultra HD."
Another improvement in the MainConcept HEVC SDK is the successful integration of the core encoder and decoder in a wide range of DivX® and Rovi solutions. MainConcept SDK v1.1 is integrated in DivX 10, the first DivX HEVC-enabled consumer software, and is being integrated in Rovi TotalCode, a professional content production solution.
MainConcept is quickly gaining traction with companies in the supply chain that are testing and integrating HEVC. Earlier this year, Rovi launched its HEVC beta program to provide more than 200 companies, including representatives spanning the digital media creation, quality control, transcoding, and delivery ecosystem, with early access to test and evaluate the compression standard. Many of these companies, like Wohler Technologies and Digigram, are anticipating product rollouts early next year.
Digigram offers advanced solutions to broadcast, IPTV, Web TV, and OTT operators through its range of all-IP video products. The company is testing and planning the integration of HEVC on its AQILIM product line and will be hosting an HEVC demonstration at its booth (Hall 8 C51) at IBC this week.
"Our AQILIM range product is already powered by MainConcept H.264/AVC SDK," said Laurent Gros, Video Product Manager at Digigram. "We are convinced that Rovi is the right partner to enable us to take the next major step in video compression with HEVC."
Wohler, a leader in audio and video monitoring solutions for the broadcast, motion picture, and professional audio/visual markets, is testing and integrating the MainConcept SDK with their RadiantGrid platform to support standard HEVC and DivX HEVC adaptive streaming. Wohler is initially targeting support for high-definition and Ultra HD over-the-top and video-on-demand HEVC services.
"We are looking to Rovi to help us navigate the exciting new HEVC ecosystem," said Kirk Marple, CTO at Wohler. "Our customers are increasingly inquiring about HEVC. We have joined forces with Rovi so our customers can reap the many benefits of HEVC, including amazing compression efficiency, reduced storage and bandwidth costs, and support for higher resolutions, such as 4K."
Rovi's MainConcept SDK continues to make strides on encoding quality and performance, based on numerous in-house tests. The first release of the MainConcept HEVC SDK was realizing 28-48 percent bitrate improvements over H.264 (MainConcept H.264 v9.7 encoder) in internal company benchmark tests. What's more, the included and patent-pending Smart Adaptive Bitrate Encoding Technology (SABET) ™ achieved more than a 30 percent performance gain with transcoding adaptive formats such as DivX HEVC adaptive streaming. This means companies interested in maximizing the efficiency of their applications, services and environments may reduce total encoding time for an adaptive stream by more than 30 percent by using SABET. Rovi plans to continue its efforts to optimize the technology to achieve high-quality and high-performance benchmarks.
In addition to being a key technology for third-party developers, MainConcept HEVC SDK is a core component of Rovi's end-to-end solution for enabling and accelerating HEVC adoption through the entire video value chain. Rovi's solution includes the DivX Video Service™ with proven DivX DRM for protected content delivery for service providers, mobile operators and content retailers; DivX software tools for PC-based consumer creation and playback, and a new DivX Certification program to allow integrated circuit (IC) and consumer electronics (CE) customers to quickly bring to market mobile and consumer electronics products that support high-quality HEVC playback.
HEVC is designed to offer almost double the compression efficiency of H.264 and therefore reduce storage and bandwidth costs, as well as support higher resolutions such as 4K, which we expect will have a significant impact on video distribution and consumption. The MainConcept HEVC SDK is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, 32 and 64 bit versions, low level C++ API and DirectShow filters. More information is available at: mainconcept.com/hevc.
Rovi is showcasing the MainConcept HEVC SDK and its suite of digital entertainment solutions this week at IBC (Stand 5.A31).
About Rovi Corporation
Rovi powers the discovery, delivery, display and monetization of digital entertainment. With innovative technology solutions for consumer electronics manufacturers, service providers, content producers, advertisers, retailers and websites, Rovi connects people and the entertainment they love. The company holds over 5,000 issued or pending patents worldwide and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. More information about Rovi can be found at rovicorp.com.
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