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?"

Comments

So much for.....

[Baalam]

answering the cell phone while visiting the restroom...

pr0n

[jargoone]

Would we really want cameras on our cell-phones?

Kinda brings a new meaning to the term phone sex doesn't it?

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.

Symetric ?

[kigrwik]

> "Symmetric" means that encoding the video is as fast as decoding.

Well, it *could* also mean that decoding is as slow as encoding :)

Besides, do we really need yet another proprietary video codec ?
If it's effective, it won't take long for it to migrate to webcasting, movie previews, etc...
See how often QuickTime is used, and how compatible it is w/ Linux, won't we risk the same thing again ? and again ? and again ??

japan

[mliu]

Admittedly the Japanese are a very tech-gadgety type people, but here in Japan newer cellular phones have still cameras on them and people love them, they're pretty popular, so that kinda answer the poster's rhetorical question. I can only imagine that moving cameras will be even more popular. All modern cell phones here have beautiful color displays, and it's pretty sweet being able to take a picture of something with your cell phone and then send it to your friend's cell phone where it can be instantly viewed. Not necessarily super useful but pretty fun, especially among the younger set.

And NTT DoCoMo's quasi-3G service (FOMA) has full bidirectional motion video, so that addresses the original post more directly. Quality could be better, but they are those video phones you always see in sci-fi, and mobile to boot......main thing that's keeping adoption low is that at the moment their service is only available in the Tokyo region last time I checked. Maybe since then they've added a few more regions, but service is pretty limited still. But I recall reading an article about how DoCoMo was surprised by how large demand was still, with it surpassing their initial estimates, so I guess adoption on those is going just fine too. Right now it's mainly geared at businesses, with the hype surrounding applications like using the camera to show progress at the work site to be people back at the office and things like that, but as price comes down, obviously it will become more mainstream.

Neat.

[glowingspleen]

That's cool...we really needed another level of distraction for idiots that use cell phones in the car! Beep beep.

these things are great!

[posmon]

fantastic! so depending where on the phone they put the camera, you can either look down my ear or my throat. enjoy!

Every Cell Phone a Surveillance Camera

[stankulp]

There is already a lot of anecdotal evidence that the proliferation of cell phones and the consequent ability of witnesses to contact police while a crime is in progress has been one of the primary reasons for the drop in crime in recent decades.

With a video camera/cell phone, they could also be recording evidence to be used at trial.

Violent public crime would become obsolete, and violent criminals would find it hard to remain free.

No common sense at k-tech

[SanLouBlues]

A look at k-tech's still image compression shows them touting the advantages of their image format over jpegs. With jpegs of what both formats look like. They aren't the best marketers.

Re:Well personally...

[FasterThanLight]

No, no, no... this will lead to an entirely new phenomenon! We already have the "hands-free" earbud style headset, so...

Instead of the usual "person talking to themselves"(i.e. talking into the headset but not holding the phone), there will be legions of people walking around having animated conversations with their cell phone held at arms' length. Can you imagine someone trying desperately to get a signal? Or having a heated argument? Something similar to the following... "IF I'VE TOLD YOU ONCE, I'VE TOLD YOU A THOUSAND TIMES, DON'T PISS ME OFF!!!"