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On2 Technologies reveals 1080p hardware video decoder for handsets
On the same day that Texas Instruments chose to showcase a new chip that would enable HD recording capabilities on cellphones, On2 Technologies is taking a moment from its hectic day in Barcelona to trumpet an all new 1080p hardware RTL video decoder. The Hantro 8190 reportedly supports Adobe Flash along with H.263, H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1, Sorenson Spark and VP6 video formats, and it can even handle JPEG images up to 16-megapixels. According to On2, the device was created to be easily integrated with ARM, MIPS and "other embedded CPU and DSP cores," and can supposedly decode 1080p H.264 video at 30 frames-per-second using a clock frequency of just 165MHz. As it stands, the Hantro 8190 is currently available for licensing, but only time will tell who's going to bite.
ABC.com's HD will be less than 2 Mbps
We knew that free HD from ABC.com was too good to be true, and now ABC's VP of technology spills the beans. In order to deliver streaming HD over the Internet, ABC will be using On2 Technologies' video codec to deliver 720p video at 24 fps, but at a bitrate of between 850 Kbps and 2 Mbps. This really isn't much higher than their current streaming service -- that some already believe is HD -- and about half of what we would consider acceptable if encoded with H.264. Sure we knew that the the video wasn't going to be up to our standards, but at this rate we wonder how many people wouldn't just pay $2 an episode to avoid all the dancing grass and un-skipable commercials, if given the chance.
