Ortiva upgrades mobile streaming video with H.264 compression

Ortiva Wireless has upgraded its video optimization server to support more efficient, higher quality video streaming to mobile devices.

The company’s server, dubbed mobile Video Optimization Gateway (mVOG), now supports the H.264 video compression standard and QVGA display resolution of 320x240 pixels. Also known as MPEG4 Part 10 and MPEG4 AVC, the protocol was developed to improve video quality over a range of different networks and applications.

It’s used in a growing array of typically higher-end mobile devices, such as the Nokia N96 and N95 smartphones. Quantenna Communications just unveiled a draft-802.11n chip designed to support high-def video streaming throughout an entire building, supporting the H.264 standard.

According to the Nielsen Company, mobile video use continues to rise, but still remains the purview of a fraction of mobile users. The company’s latest report found that in Q4, 11.2M people watched TV or video on their cell phones. That was an increase of 9% over the previous quarter. The number of mobile video subscribers also grew: to 18.6 million, or 13% higher than the previous quarter.

The report says that on average, subscribers watch 17 sessions per month, with each session on average about 17 minutes long. That adds up to an average of just over 4 hours of mobile video per month.

Ortiva provides cellular carriers with server software that optimizes video transmission from base stations to these users, over existing cellular networks. To do that, carriers need middleware to make that one-way video transmission as efficient as possible. The Ortiva product is intended to compensate for an array of detected radio frequency interference problems for individual users, constantly optimizing the available bandwidth, and creating crisp, clear, smooth video images to each subscriber.

In January, Vodafone Portugal became Ortiva’s first European mVOG customer, with plans to deploy the gateway to improve the carrier’s live video channels.

A mobile device requests video from the carrier’s media gateway, which then links with Ortiva’s mVOG. The gateway then connects to the video content source, accepting the video stream and optimizing it before passing it downstream.

H.264 uses a variety of techniques to create good quality video at half the bit rates of earlier standards such as MPEG2 or H.263. It was the subject of a lawsuit between Qualcomm and Broadcom. A court found that Qualcomm’s failure to disclose two patents to the H.264 video standards group meant the company had waived its rights to enforce the patents, which had become part of the H.264 video compression standard.