For Immediate Release
February 23, 1998
NTT Develops Highest-Quality Audiovisual Internet Distribution System
Nippon Telegraph and Telegram Corporation (NTT) has developed "AudioLink-Pro," a real-time audiovisual distribution system over the Internet, by adding "Netviker*," NTT's new video coding technology, and a stereophonic version of "TwinVQ**," an audio coding technology, into "AudioLink***."The inclusion of "Netviker" makes "AudioLink-Pro" the world's highest-quality audiovisual coding system available. NTT will propel the penetration of the system and related R&D programs in order to develop a multimedia distribution system extensible to text and still picture data.
NTT will open a homepage for users to learn more about the high quality picture and sound capabilities of this system. Users can access and download client software to view videos and to listen to music from http://www.audiolink.or.jp/. NTT will also be starting a field trial of AudioLink-Pro with Domo Records, Inc. of the United States.
NTT also seeks partners in an audiovisual distribution test. Please contact NTT at: al-trial@audiolink.or.jp
*Netviker, a Network Video Kernel Compression technology, was developed by NTT and can provide smooth motion video at very low bite rate. In addition, "Netviker" can express moving images by camera handling such as zoom-in, zoom-out and pan within a small volume (chart 2). "Netviker" can transmit images with half the bandwidth as "H.261," the image encoding system used in the previous release of "AudioLink." (chart 3) LAN applications using "Netviker" can achieve similar quality picture as a VHS video recording.
**TwinVQ (Transform-domain Weighted Interleave Vector Quantization) was developed by NTT as a music and data compression system. This technology does not encode discrete data directly, but develops patterns from multiple pieces of data, selects similar patterns by comparing the developed patterns with predetermined standard patterns, and transmits the code for the selected patterns as a compressed code. As the result, sound data can be compressed to less than one-twelfth of its original size. With stereophonic sound, this system brings high-quality music transmission to "AudioLink-Pro."
***AudioLink allows the real-time playback of audiovisual data stored on a server via the Internet or a corporate Intranet. This system was originally developed by NTT for music. Now, high-quality visual transmission is possible with the system.
* Seminar
When: Approximately 1 month after the filing of plan with the MPT.
