Sunnyvale, California-based massively parallel systems builder MasPar Computer Corp has put the Prism video compression software from Prism Interactive Corp, Wheaton, Illinois up on its machines, and claims that the combination is the first system capable of producing broadcast quality Motion Picture Experts Group-compatible video output in real time. The Prism encoder enables its output to be optimised for a particular target decoder design to maximise image quality at the lowest possible bit rate so that a video-on-demand service provider can minimise central disk storage and maximise use of the available system bandwidth. It can also be tuned to trade off video quality against compression speed. MasPar sees the combination being used to take care of the problems created by the need for economical storage, low-speed transmission and bandwidth multiplication for applications such as video-on-demand over telephone networks, direct broadcast satellite and cable television services, optical disk and Compact Disk Karaoke. The compression system accepts CCIR-601 D1 digital video input, YUV 4:2:2, 720 by 480 pixels for NTSC, 720 by 576 pixels for PAL and SECAM, and an average of 16 bits per pixel and 30 frames per second. Other input formats and bit rates can also be accommodated. Initially, output will be SIF resolution, or 352 by 240 pixels, 1.5Mbps and 30 frames a second but output can be generated at any format, resolution or bit rate that the application requires, so long as the system configuration is adequate to support the desired compression rates and quality factors. The MasPar Prism compression system will be offered on a range of configurations priced from $250,000 to $1.5m and will be commercially available for end-users and system integrators in the third quarter.
