IBC 2003 Streaming Products Wrap-Up

The broadcast and streaming worlds are rapidly becoming one entity, if product announcements and show-floor buzz at IBC2003 are any indication. Exhibitor and attendee levels were both up this year, following several years of lowered capital expenditures in the broadcast and streaming spaces. The level of enthusiasm at the show also bodes well for the Streaming Media California 2003 show that opens in less than three weeks.

Many "black box" solutions for encoding, transfer, indexing and decoding were introduced during the show, and streaming solutions topped the list of impressive demonstrations. Below are just a few of the products that caught my eye (and ear) during IBC.

H.264
Several companies demonstrated H.264/AVC at IBC, but two most captured my attention: Modulus showed an H.264 hardware encoder system based on an LSI chipset, both in SD and HD (1080i) modes, while the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz Institute booth demonstrated a Pentium-4 3.06Ghz based decode of HD 720p – at 1.3Mb per second. Fraunhofer also demonstrated H.264 playback on an iPaq PocketPC.