Researchers develop local digital code system By Zhu Boru (China Daily) Updated: 2005-12-08 06:06
The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has given the green light to an
audio-video coding standard (AVS) developed in China.
It has been developed by a special group comprising Chinese companies,
research institutions and government agencies.
Commercial use of the technology is expected to start by the end of this
month with mobile TV services offered by the country's major mobile operators.
"The MII's appraisal results indicate that the AVS is mature in technology
and ready for application," Huang Tiejun, secretary-general of the AVS working
committee, said on Tuesday.
"We expect it to be widely used in domestic industries and hopefully become
the national standard."
The AVS committee, set up in 2002 with support from the MII and the Ministry
of Science and Technology, has been aiming to develop new technology in digital
audio-visual coding and decoding, as the existing standards available grow
obsolete.
AVS allows digital visual and audio data to be compressed so it can be stored
and transmitted.
This new AVS technology will help China save more than US$1 billion in
royalty fees over the coming decade, according to Huang.
Digital audio-visual coding and decoding technology is widely used in digital
TVs, laser discs, digital video, video conferencing and is also needed in
3G-based data services.
It is estimated that China needs between 300 and 500 million coding chips
over the next ten years to use in various multimedia digital devices.
In addition to AVS technology, a AVS-based digital audio-visual broadcasting
system, compatible with the existing MPEG-2-based systems, have also been
developed, backed by the Computing Institution at the Chinese Academy of
Sciences.
"Our successful trial with Hong Kong's 3G network paves the way for massive
commercial use in the near future," said Huang.
AVS-based real-time streaming media services were applied to Hong Kong's 3G
network last month. It is the first time that AVS has been successfully used in
a commercial 3G network.
"We are in talks with domestic companies over possible applications," noted
Huang.
"We are already co-operating with China Mobile and China Unicom, and soon we
will launch AVS-based mobile TV services with them, probably by the end of this
month."
However, AVS needs to be used widely for it to have been worthwhile
developing, according to Sui Xueqing of the Computing Institution at the Chinese
Academy of Sciences.
In its 11th Five-Year Plan, China stated clearly that the development of
digital audio-visual sectors would be given priority up to 2010.
The government wants to encourage self-innovation.
China Central Television (CCTV) has decided to adopt MPEG-2-based systems in
its prepared HDTV (high-definition television) programmes by signing deals with
Toshiba and Panasonic last month.
Most domestic TV makers, including TCL, Haier and Changhong support AVS
technology.
The prevailing international standard, MPEG-2, made a decade ago is now
outdated, many believe.
Its upgraded version, MPEG-4, performs better, although it has been widely
rejected due to high user fees.
(China Daily 12/08/2005 page10)
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