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Date: 11/5/2008
Link: http://www.digitimes.com/tag/network_video/0013487.html
Network video shows potential in a growing range of industries, from surveillance and security, to health care, industrial automation, and transportation. This is largely thanks to the boom in image sensor technology and the ability to capture high-resolution, high-fidelity audio/video. But at the same time the trend to higher quality has put pressure on other elements of the ecosystem, in particular how to effectively cater to the increasing bandwidth demands of these video streams, and how to store, manage and archive cost effectively. Digitimes recently had a chance to talk with Tim Chen, Senior Vice President for Video Communications at Lanner Electronics, about Lanner's move into the network video market and its recent release of a 16-channel all-in-one H.264 video encoding motherboard.
Q: What is the significance of Lanner's move into the network video market?
A: Lanner's experience with network platforms and technologies gives us a deep understanding of hardware requirements from the network's perspective. When we combine that knowledge with network video, what we come up with is better methods for compression and transfer of video content over a network. We see a lot of potential for more and more applications to take advantage of network video, and with modern compression standards like the H.264 codec, we can achieve a lot more with less bandwidth or the same bandwidth as before.
Q: We hear a lot about H.264 these days, what are the advantages of using H.264?
A: H.264 is quickly becoming a global standard video codec. As you probably know, the compression rate is about two to three times higher than MPEG-2, and about twice as high as earlier MPEG-4 codecs. With H.264, we're able to transfer high resolution multi-channel content over Ethernet without bogging down the network. Our new all-in-one video encoding motherboard, for example, can simultaneously capture and convert 16 channels of full D1 resolution video to H.264 compressed format for delivery over a network.
Q: What kind of applications are there for this video motherboard?
A: For this product the focus is on surveillance. We've made it easier for our surveillance customers to build applications on our platforms, so we've taken the audio input, video input, H.264 encoding and the alarm inputs and outputs for a 16-channel surveillance system and put them all on an x86 based motherboard platform. This helps our customers shorten development time and bring their surveillance solutions to market faster. At the same time, we're also developing video products for other applications. We have a number of initiatives underway for intelligent transportation systems that utilize network video technologies. And we're also working on platforms for network video broadcasting and other video over IP applications.
Q: As a relatively new entrant to the surveillance industry, Lanner must be facing some stiff competition from more well-known players, like Bosch, GE, Sony, and Panasonic. How do you differentiate yourselves and what role does Lanner play in this industry?
A: Lanner's role is to provide the hardware platforms on which other companies, like those you mentioned, can develop full-featured applications. Our expertise is in platform development and integration, and we're working with software suppliers to provide more comprehensive platforms so that customers can get their products to market faster. But we're not directly in competition with those solution providers, we're looking to supply to them. It's the same with software – our expertise is not in software development, so we work with partners who do focus on software. That way we can stay focused on what we do best, which is hardware platform development.
Q: Where do you see this market moving in the future?
A: We predict that there will be more and more applications for network video for a wide range of industries, including broadcasting, transportation, health care, shipping and industrial automation. We also expect to see more and more integration of video and IP technologies with other security systems like access control. In the transportation industry, we've already had a lot of positive feedback for intelligent transportation systems that integrate video with other mobile computing technologies. As the price of cameras continues falling and the quality keeps improving, we will see video play a more important role in all kinds of industries. And with more video content being created, there will be more demand for network platforms to manage and store all of the content.
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