NAB Perspectives: Adtec’s Ancelin Sees Accelerating Move to MPEG-4

The move toward MPEG-4 transmission has sped up over the past two years, with several major sports broadcasters making the switch. At Adtec’s NAB booth (SU6117), this shift can be seen firsthand.

“Clearly, the change from MPEG-2 to MPEG-4 is accelerating,” Adtec President Kevin Ancelin says. “The trend going toward MPEG-4 is probably five times faster this year than it was last year. We are a force in doing that. All of our encoders do MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, so the operators can deal with any transport using our box. But all of our major tier-one customers are using MPEG-4 now.”

While Adtec’s encoders are ready and able for the MPEG-4 migration, they still support MPEG-2 for those not ready to make the change. Headlining Adtec’s booth this year are the EN81 multi-codec encoder and the latest version of its RD-60 integrated receiver decoder, the RD-60-03.

The EN81 can encode 16 channels of phase-aligned audio without the need for external audio devices. The EN81 offers both MPEG-2 and AVC (MPEG-4) 3D, HD, and SD frame sizes with both 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 chroma sampling.

The RD-60 supports MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 platforms with 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 HD and SD decoding. It also supports 16 channels of phase-aligned audio, including MPEG-1 Layer 2, Dolby AC3/5.1, HE-AAC, AAC-LC audio decoding.

According to Ancelin, the combination of the EN81 and RD60 deliver an end-to-end contribution solution for 3D, HD, and SD.