KT-Tech Challenges Nancy and MPEG-4 for Wireless Video

Robert Gallagher writes: "Last week, at http://www.kttech.com/comp.html, KT-Tech released a demo of their video codec running at 32 Kbps. According to the web page and discussion on comp.compression, this codec is 'symmetric,' meaning encoding is just as fast as decoding, and that both can be done in software and in real-time. While Nancy is getting good press for its light decoding cost, KT-Tech is apparently trying to get into the two-way wireless communication market. One question to ponder: Would we really want cameras on our cell-phones?"

Show people what your talking about.

[ruvreve]

Putting a camera on a cell phone would be another tool to aid in describing what a user is looking at. Having done my fair share of over the phone tech support it would be nice if the user could take a screen shot of what they are trying to describe and send it via cell phone. Yet another step closer to me not having to drive into work.

who cares about cell phones...

[llamalicious]

does it scale well enough for corporate video conferencing?

Cameras on our cell phones ? Hell Yes !

[Anonymous Coward]

As a digital camera owner, I carry the thing just about everywhere. The phrase "A picture tells a thousand words" is so true ! Short of photography, as a hobby, having a digital imaging device that's portable is really handy. Can't remember your bios settings ? Don't have a pencil+paper handy to copy them down ? Simply take a photo of the screen, and continue to boot into your OS of choice.. Taking pictures of whiteboards after meetings, remembering settings/manuals, photos of hard to reach server backs, etc. -- all useful.

Since digital cameras allow you to take and re-take pictures, film isn't necessary. I often mail friends pictures of things I've taken while walking into work. Having a camera that connects (or is on) a cell phone would be great. That said, a word of caution, if it can't produce at least 1024x800 pictures, it won't be worth a damn.

My thoughts

[c_g_hills]

The video quality is too low to be really usable. I find the VP4 [on2.com] codec much more usable. Besides, most mobiles these days still dont have a color display. Perhaps more compression could be achieved by converting the video to grayscale.

yes

[johnjones]

oh and for fscks sake its not the codec that matters

all and I mean all codecs cant do video at 9600baud.
(go on talk about asci if you must)

really you need high speed connections

then why dont you use a standard like MPEG ?
hard to compress boll*cks ARM 7 systems can do it (all future systems will be ARM11 or StrongARM2 aka Xscale based) and the hardware exists so that you pipe raw in one end of DSP and get MPEG out the other its done to death TI who are THE phone chipset people have it down to a T

this is nothing but marketing you HAVE to have a standard !
MPEG is it (select your version) handset people are not going to switch to useing a certain type unless its a standard and everyone has fair access

sorry but this is not the way its going

regards

john jones

Player runs nice under WineX!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just tried it - lots of times their demo clips are giving 30fps (although the clips don't have an Audio)..

You'll need the player from KT tech web site.

Honest Demo

[devnullkac]

Whether or not this technology takes off, at least they have honest demo clips. The "IndianHead" clip shows a wide variety of dynamic video and has frame rates that drop down as low as 0.4 fps when the stream has trouble. Even the "Butch" clip has an assymetric background which causes the left side of the speaker's face to be less detailed than the right side.

Cell Phone in my Camera

[gjhart]

What I want is a cell phone in my camera. Snap a photo, send it right to the server, no worries about running out of space.

It ain't the users that want the camera...

[neile]

I'd argue it's the network operators that want the cameras on the phones, not the users. And it's not for any user benefit :)

European operators in particular paid obscene amounts of money for the rights to radio spectrum for 3G networks. Now they have to recoup their costs. Can you think of anything that would run on a cellphone and would use up huge amounts of data, thus leading to nice big phone bills for users to pay? Well, the only thing that operators can come up with is video.

So, the operators tell all the handset people they want cameras to do video teleconferencing and send still pics as MMS/email message attachments. The handset people badly want to sell phones to the operators, so they go do it.

Doesn't matter if it's useful :)

In several words, yes.

[FireballFreddy]

Each iteration in technology takes us closer to the real goal: Direct sensory transmission from person to person. If for no other reason, improved technology for transferring *any* data is important as a stepping stone.

For example, I take a trip to Seattle. Back home my girlfriend "calls" me, and I let her share my senses. The advanced technology allows her an immersive experience... she sees the skyscrapers, hears cars below, smells the funnel cakes, feels the wind blowing while I'm looking out from the observation deck of the Space Needle. And she doesn't have to be there.

Obviously it's all vaporware today. But each step takes us closer to the goal. Even if it is a commercial failure, we still need to take these steps.

Or are my expecations of the future too great?

-FF

News gathering implications

[MediaBoy77]

As a local TV news producer, I love the thought of having lots of people with FMV capabilities on their cell phone. It takes what CNN has done with videophone technology, and puts it in everyone's hands.

In a breaking news situation, ordinarily we have to send a camera crew and live truck to the scene, wait for them to raise their mast or dish, then set up a microwave or satellite signal to get on the air. That's 30 minutes on a good day, with good traffic, and good weather.

Imagine if any 13 year old geek with a camcorder and a cell phone could be the first on the scene, and we just dial into their cell phone. It turns everyone into a potential live reporter.

Of course, with judicious use of the seven second delay. :-)

The question to ponder?

[foxtrot]

One question to ponder: Would we really want cameras on our cell-phones?

Well, you and I, not at the moment. We geeks look at our phone, we look at our PDA, and we see two separate devices.

But our phones now have built-in contact management software. My brother's phone has "wireless web"-- not the real Internet, but a surprising amount of crap can be found. This leads me to believe that the general public wants their phone to be a PDA.

Now, look at us, supposively the bleeding edge. We're installing the intimate distribution of Linux on our iPaq's. We carry around a gig of mp3 in our pocket, or maybe even a half a season of Babylon 5. We're basically turning our PDAs into baby versions of our personal computers. People want their cellphone to be a PDA, we want our PDAs to be real computers, so why not cellphones as computers? [0] Our computers have webcams, we buy digital firewire camcorders, so why not have the one we carry on our belt support webcams? Sure, I think the real bandwidth will go the other direction, as bored business travelers waiting for their delayed flight to leave sit there watching last night's episode of ER on their cellphone, but why not also be able to send video outbound?

[0] I do see one problem with this: interface. Right now, we don't know how to make a usable general purpose interface for a computer small enough to put it on a cellphone, and the other feature trend in cellphones is "as small as you can still fit a day's worth of battery into."

-JDF