But the quality of the video from these devices is likely to be poor, and consumers usually will capture and share short clips. So, the encoders on these portable devices typically will use the computationally less expensive (and thus more silicon- and power-efficient) MPEG-4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile) or SP (Simple Profile) video-encoding standard.
For the fabless semiconductor companies, it isn’t as cut and dried as creating a multimedia chip that can decode H.264 Main Profile streams and encode using MPEG-4 ASP. In fact, video content on the Internet comes encoded in many different video standards, including H.264, MPEG-4, VC1/WMV9, MPEG-2, Real, and even MPEG-1.
The multimedia systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) will have to incorporate a programmable multistandard video decoder/encoder block. Programmability in these video codec blocks is important because there are always new standards that become available, and become popular, among consumers. For example, China recently announced an H.264-like, royalty-free video codec called AVS. At the end of the day, though, the content creators and providers will decide the popularity of a video standard.
The implication of all these technology and product innovations is that the same youngsters who drove cameras on cell phones will now drive TV and camcorders on cell phones, too. So don’t laugh the next time someone tells you that TV is coming to a cell phone near you! It could be as soon as next year.
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