New devices hike bar for multimedia quality (Korea)
by Won Rak-yon
December 27, 2001
Will MPEG-4 become the standard for delivering broadband content?
MPEG-4 is a next-generation compression technology, combining audio,
video and graphics in a single streaming format. The technology offers
picture quality five times as crisp as video CDs.
InkaEntWorks, an Internet multimedia content provider, has unveiled what it
called the world's first hand-held MPEG-4 player, Motion-i, enabling users to
download and watch movies, music videos and news programs.
The device, which is about the size of a package of cigarettes and weighs
105 grams, has a small color display panel and resembles a folder-type
cellular phone. The device can also support other audio and picture file
formats, such as MP3, WMA, AAC.
"The shift in generation from audio MP3 players to audio-visual MP4 devices
will take place," a company official, Cho Myung-hwan, said.
Samsung Electronics Co. introduced in late June a cell phone that could
play MPEG4 video images in 200,000 colors. But the gadget was short-lived
due to a lack of demand.
Experts say local cell phone vendors will unveil a series of MPEG-4
handsets after May, when a mobile network offering data transmission
speeds up to 20 times faster than the current standard will be in
commercial service.
LG Electronics Inc. is developing a cell phone with a liquid crystal display
panel that supports 260,000 colors. Reakosys Inc., which supplies LG with
its MPEG-4 software, has also developed software for playing video images
on personal data assistants.
"Korean companies are globally competitive in their MPEG-4 technology,"
Jang Yoon-seok, an executive at Reakosys, said. "As the 2.5-generation
and third-generation mobile telecommunication market forms overseas, we
expect the demand for MPEG-4 devices to grow."
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