LONDON — Engineers attending the 88th meeting of the MPEG/ISO standards group, held in Maui, Hawaii, have recommended that a new generation of video compression technology with higher compression capability than the existing AVC standard in its best configuration (the High Profile), is needed.

The group maintains such "High-Performance Video Coding (HVC)" will be intended mainly for high quality applications, by providing performance improvements in terms of coding efficiency at higher resolutions, and suitable for entertainment-quality services such as HD mobile, home cinema and Ultra High Definition (UHD) TV.

The group noted that technology evolution will soon make possible the capture and display of video material with a quantum leap in quality when compared to the quality of HDTV. However, networks are already finding it difficult to carry HDTV content to end users at data rates that are economical.

It suggested that "video bitrate (when current compression technology is used) will go up faster than the network infrastructure will be able to carry economically, both for wireless and wired networks.

"Therefore, a further increase of data rates, such as soon will be possible, will put additional pressure on the networks."

The meeting agreed to commence a more rigorous assessment about the feasibility of HVC, and issued a "Call for Evidence” regarding the existence of technologies that would be able to fulfill these goals.

A set of appropriate test materials and rate points that would match the requirements of HVC application scenarios was also defined.

Responses to this call are expected to be evaluated at the 89th MPEG meeting scheduled to be held in London beginning 29th June.

The MPEG group says that depending on the outcome of this call, it may issue a "Draft Call for Proposals" at the London meeting.

The Call for Evidence could be found as document ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11N10553 at when this story was posted .

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