Compression technology is advancing at an astonishing rate, and where a few weeks back, many people were querying the feasibility of sending one video stream down an ordinary telephone line, a new company, Digital Compression Technology Ltd Partnership is claiming to have developed – with the Hoboken, New Jersey-based Stevens Institute of Technology – a patented digital compression technology that it says will enable the current telephone infrastructure to handle up to 10 channels of video. It says that unlike other technology that compresses signals at their source, its own system compresses the signal already in channel, running 16 bits in parallel instead of one bit at a time, and reassembling the bit stream at the receiving end. The approach is also claimed to eliminate errors in transmission, and the company claims it could save telephone and cable television companies hundreds of billions of dollars by eliminating the need for fibre optic installation. The system has yet to be field-tested, but Digital Compression Technology says it can enable homes now receiving telephone service to receive movies and interactive games and services over the same 26-gauge twisted copper phone wire. It claims the technology could also enable a cable system to send 20 to 30 channels in the space of one channel, three times what is currently possible with traditional digital compression. The company’s chairman is Jim Judelson, who was president of Paramount Communications Inc until he lost the competition for the top job to Martin Davis in 1983. He formed the company with Elliot Gruenberg, a former executive at IBM Corp, where he spent some 30 years studying digital compression. Judelson says he is currently negotiating a deal with a regional Bell telephone company, although he won’t say which. Analysts and competitors are sceptical of the claims for the system’s performance.
