Mavix tackles surveillance with MPEG4

Mavix is using MPEG4 technology to help move surveillance applications into the 21st century. The company's MediaRacer 100 is a paperback-sized box with two processors for compressing video into MPEG4 and delivering two-way audio over a network. MediaRacer's are placed at each camera location and do the compression on the far end, so less bandwidth is needed between the camera and control room. Mavix also offers an network video recorder capable of recording video feeds from 40 different cameres. People can watch video streams on PC using a software client or standard TV using a decoder box. Mavix says it can stream at bitrates ranging from 56K up to 2M bit/sec. There's also software that can allow the video to be sent to and viewed on a PDA. MediaRacer 100 is priced at $1,000.