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New MPEG-4 encoding system dramatically improves bandwidth efficiency for Starz and Encore high-definition channels

Motorola (NYSE:MOT) today announced it is implementing a four-channel, high-definition (HD) MPEG-4/AVC encoding system for Starz Entertainment, a premium movie service provider in the United States, to begin migration from current MPEG-2 installations to MPEG-4 installations. The system compresses, encrypts, modulates, and receives HD signals within a single integrated transmission system to allow Starz to expand its HD offerings for subscribers. The system is currently being implemented for Starz Entertainment’s existing HD channels, Starz, Starz Kids and Family HD, Starz Edge HD and Starz Comedy HD. The latest addition to Starz Entertainment’s HD movie channel lineup, Encore HD, will be launched in MPEG-4 concurrent with this migration.

Freescale Semiconductor’s Symphony™ family of audio digital signal processors (DSP) are the first DSPs in the market to integrate multi-channel Dolby® Volume intelligent audio processing technology. Based on the audio industry-standard Symphony 24-bit DSP core, Freescale’s popular Symphony DSP platform combined with Dolby Volume offers an elegant solution for consistent program loudness on A/V receivers, surround sound processors, digital TVs, speaker systems and Home Theater in a Box (HTiB) products.

Dolby Volume brings a fundamentally different approach to delivering consistent volume levels across a wide variety of content, channel programming or input sources. Using a psychoacoustic model of human hearing, this sophisticated technology performs measurement, analysis and control of perceived volume levels. Dolby Volume complements Dolby’s range of audio technologies including Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD.

“Our long partnership with Freescale has allowed us to implement multi-channel Dolby

ARM has released highly optimized source code versions of the OpenMAX DL (Development Layer) libraries for decoding the AAC and MP3 formats in the audio domain, and decoding the MPEG-4 and H.264 formats in the video domain. These functions can be downloaded free-of-charge from the ARM website http://www.arm.com/products/esd/openmax_home.html, and the license granted to these functions entitles the user to integrate them into their own products at no cost.

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) today announced the newest members of its Voice over IP (VoIP) gateway silicon and software solutions that will enable equipment manufacturers to achieve higher channel densities with improved voice quality. TI’s newest gateway solutions are powered by its TMS320C64x+^TM digital signal processor (DSP) that significantly increases performance for VoIP and video encode, decode and transcode applications. The flexible architecture of TI’s new solutions allows equipment manufacturers to transition to a common hardware and software architecture that scales from eight to several hundreds of channels while supporting advanced voice and video features. For more information, go to: www.ti.com/voip.

The TNETV2664, TNETV2666, TNETV2686 and TNETV2689 are the newest additions to TI’s field-proven medium density VoIP gateway product family. These solutions support an Ethernet interface and full IP encapsulation that allows the DSPs to put voice media directly on the network. This integration enables manufacturers to choose a smaller, more cost-effective host processor thereby simplifying