Multimedia
Digital TV
Digital television services are being implemented in many countries and will replace most, if not all, existing analogue systems throughout the world within the next decade. The joint standard ISO/IEC 16500 (Parts 1 to 9) provides for worldwide interoperability of end-to-end digital TV systems. It allows producers of multimedia content to reach the widest possible audience, as well as protecting users from obsolescence and giving them seamless access to information and communication. It enables carriers to offer effective transport and manufacturers to provide hardware and software for unrestricted production flow and use of information.
JPEG
JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Expert Group, formed within ISO and IEC. The group has devised a coding method for photographs and hence also for still pictures in television.
ISO/IEC 15444-1 allows compression to be improved by about 25% with no loss of image quality. Internet users, in particular, will save a lot of time. Expensive image correction procedures can be simplified or become unnecessary, and the overall performance is much improved, opening up possibilities for increased use of digital image processing in sectors such as photography, archiving and transfer of hardcopy.
JPEG 2000 has also opened up the possibility of transferring and storing medical images, not previously possible because of the legal implications of image loss. The pre-press sector is another possible opening. The greatly improved performance, particularly in the high-compression range, will be particularly beneficial to internet-based and mobile applications, which have to handle large amounts of data on a limited bandwidth.
A cost-use analysis for JPEG 2000 can be presented on the basis of the 12 million images in the picture archives of the Berlin-Brandenburg Museum Authority, Germany. The economic benefits stem from the considerably reduced storage space needed. At a rate of 0,015 EUR per megabyte (with state-of the art equipment), and an average image size of 20 MB, this will, depending on the procedure used, save between 135 000 EUR and 865 000 EUR.
In addition to reduced costs because of shorter transfer times and reduced storage space, there are the following advantages:
·Great potential for innovation regarding future use of standard broadband technology (UMTS).
·Positive environmental effects, e.g. no chemical processing of photos (direct processing from computer to paper).
MPEG
MPEG, which stands for Moving Picture Experts Group, is the name of a working group and of a family of ISO/IEC JTC1 standards used for coding audio-visual information (e.g. movies, video, music) in a digital compressed format. In a world where information technology, consumer electronics and telecommunication products incorporate increasingly sophisticated technologies and the need for timely available standards is as strong as ever, MPEG has provided a proven mechanism to feed research results into standards facilitating the communication of visual information.
Widely used by the media industry (producers of movies, CD-audio, CD-ROM, DVD) and incorporated in a wide variety of consumer products (computers, digital TV, CD and DVD players, photo and video cameras), MPEG standards have helped the creation of an industry worth several tens of billion USD. The solid foundation on international standards adopted by the key industry players all over the world has increased the opportunities for the development of local industries and internal markets in association with products having broad, worldwide market coverage. It is striking to note, for example, how in several Asian countries (notably Republic of Korea and China) this has made an important contribution to development and economic growth.