The Data Compression Newsletter - December 2005
Posted by Sachin Garg on 9th January 2006 | Permanent Link
Here is a copy of the first issue sent by mail to subscribers. Click here to subscribe or to know more about the newsletter. In case you subscribed but didn’t recieved a copy, please let me know so that I can fix it (after all its the first time). Any suggestions and comments for improvements are ofcourse welcome.
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A monthly roundup of all news and happenings reported at The Data Compression News Blog. More information about this newsletter at
http://www.c10n.info/newsletter
Here is last month’s news, enjoy…
6 Months of Compression News
On 2005-12-31 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/302
Started almost 6 months ago, we have seen a lots of major events happening in data compression community. c10n.info has a come a long way in this period. The next year will definitely be a lot more exciting than the last one.
Doom9 Video Codec Shoot-Out 2005
On 2005-12-30 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/301
Doom9 has published their annual video codec benchmark.
DirecTV continues to expand their MPEG-4 encoded broadcasts
On 2005-12-29 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/300
HDBEAT: Local Channels in MPEG-4 HD on DirecTV starting today for New York and LA
MPEG-2 Not Dead Yet
On 2005-12-28 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/299
And you thought H.264 was a superior codec. The folks at Digigami are claiming that their VBR MPEG-2 code is every bit as good as H.264.
Jim Leonard added in comments that “What’s not obvious from the press release is that, while it is possible, it requires human interactionand multiple passes to achieve it.” and that “Another thing not obvious is that their current flagship products are only available for Mac and won’t be ported to Windows any time soon.”
Quantized Indexing Source Code Available
On 2005-12-28 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/298
Quantized Indexing is a newly introduced entropy coding method claiming better speed and compression efficiency. Ratko V. Tomic recently announced that source code for QI has finally been released.
MPEG-4 ALS (Audio Lossless Coding) is Ready
On 2005-12-27 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/297
We now have an MPEG-4 standard for lossless coding standard.
Jim Lindner added, “Nice they finally woke up”.
PAQ7 Released
On 2005-12-26 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/296
Matt Mahoney announced release of PAQ7 at comp.compression. This is a complete rewrite of PAQ6.
Adrian Rojak looks at Data Compression
On 2005-12-26 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/295
Via /. I bumped into this ad hoc commentary on data compression programs
Linear Acoustic President Tim Carroll To Address SBE
On 2005-12-25 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/294
Press Release: Linear Acoustic president Tim Carroll to address SBE to discuss thorny subject of managing HDTV multichannel audio levels.
Electronics, Media Giants Form HD Alliance
On 2005-12-25 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/293
TechNewsWorld: Some of the world’s largest electronics and media companies joined together to work on high-definition television and audio standards for home entertainment networks.
Ambarella Launches Industry’s First HD H.264 System-on-Chip for Hybrid Digital Cameras
On 2005-12-24 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/291
Press Release: Venture-backed Start-up Sets New Standard for the High Definition Experience with Low Power, Cost-effective Platform.
An appeal by Squeeze Chart Maintainer
On 2005-12-22 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/290
Stephan Busch has updated his excellent benchmark: Squeeze Chart, but this time he has also made a ‘personal’ request. If you ever found his work useful, please read this. He needs your help.
Euclid Discoveries Files 15th Patent Application
On 2005-12-21 By John Scally
http://www.c10n.info/archives/289
Patents advance the development of EuclidVision™, their next generation of video compression technology for consumer and commercial applications.
Mammogram followup
On 2005-12-20 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/288
Bradley Lucier was kind enough to follow up with some additional info on his work on mammogram image compression
Difference-Of-Gaussian Compression
On 2005-12-20 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/287
Clairvoyante Inc. is marketing a technology which sure sounds like data compression.
Compression Vs. Breast Cancer
On 2005-12-20 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/286
Compression seems to remove noise while leaving the desired information in mammograms.
Forgent Awarded New Patent on Echo Cancellation
On 2005-12-19 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/285
Forgent seems to be bound on finding out patents on already-widely-used technologies.
LizardTech’s MrSID Generation 3 Image Compression Format Now Supported in ESRI’s ArcPad 7
On 2005-12-19 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/284
Press Release: LizardTech announced the company’s MrSID Generation 3 image compression format (MG3) is supported in ESRI’s ArcPad 7, making it even easier to view high quality geospatial raster imagery on handheld devices.
On2 Announces Plans to Offer Browser-Based Flash 8 Video Encoding Product
On 2005-12-19 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/283
Press Release: New Application Will Allows Users to Encode Files Locally and Save on Desktop or Upload to Publishing Service
BBB To NetZero: It Ain’t Broadband
On 2005-12-19 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/282
Better Business Bureaus’ (BBB) National Advertising Division demand’s that NetZero should discontinue advertising claiming that NetZero “HiSpeed 3G” dial-up Internet access can deliver “broadband-like speeds.” he HiSpeed 3G service uses data compression to pump more content down a 56 Kb/s dial-up data pipe than normal and claim broadband like performance.
The new world of digital cinema
On 2005-12-18 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/281
physorg.com: We are on the brink of breaking through to the new world of digital cinema (D-Cinema). The key to unlocking this potential is data compression and researchers are set to have a starring role.
Yahoo! Gives up against Forgent
On 2005-12-17 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/280
Scheduling software maker turned patent enforcer Forgent has announced an agreement with Yahoo in which the search engine will license the technology behind JPEG image compression. In exchange, Yahoo will be removed from litigation against companies Forgent claims are infringing on what it calls the ‘672 Patent.
D-Lib Magazine’s December Ish
On 2005-12-15 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/279
D-Lib Magazine this month features a handful of articles on the AIHT - Archive Ingest and Handling Test.
DivX 6.1 Released
On 2005-12-14 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/278
DivX 6.1 has been released, and promises super-duper speed improvements.
Texas Instruments Announces OMAP 2 Processor for Mobile Phones
On 2005-12-14 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/277
Texas Instruments Inc has announced it is sampling a new high-performance OMAP 2-based processor that offers a consumer electronics experience for 3G mobile phones, boosting video performance by up to 4x and imaging performance by up to 1.5x.
GE Security’s new WaveJet video compression technology doubles DVR capacity
On 2005-12-14 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/276
Security Park: GE’s Security business has announced the availability of its new WaveJet video compression technology, which lets DVRs store as much as double the video images at medium resolution.
Christie, FotoKem and Doremi produce first DCDM
On 2005-12-12 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/275
Press Release: FotoKem, Doremi Labs and Christie Digital Systems, USA, have produced the first Digital Cinema Distribution Master (DCDM) of a major motion picture that conforms to the specifications of the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI). The DCDM was then used to generate a Digital Cinema Package (DCP), ready for distribution.
Dr. DivX returns?
On 2005-12-12 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/274
I thought Dr. DivX was dead, but it looks like a 2.0 beta is in the works.
AMIMON Demonstrates Technology for Wireless Transmission of Uncompressed HDTV at CES
On 2005-12-12 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/273
Press Release: Wireless Video-Aware Modem Features WHDI(TM) for Access to all Video Sources with Video Rates of up to 1.5Gbps
LA Times’ editorial on current state of patent system
On 2005-12-10 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/271
LA Times published an interesting editorial on the current state of our patent system.
Compression In Writing Text
On 2005-12-10 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/270
A news blogger gives a casual example of intelligent text compression. Lossy but still algorithmically unachievable for years.
DivX Adds Mac Support
On 2005-12-09 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/269
San Diego-based DivX has released a new entree into the Mac market with the release of an upgraded digital media product for creating DivX encoded video on the Apple platform.
China approves AVS codec
On 2005-12-08 By Mark
http://www.c10n.info/archives/268
The Ministry of Information has approved China’s proprietary AVS video codec.
Jorn Grammons added an interesting exerpt on how China’s AVS workgroup had got access to not only On2’s techincal library, but also the source codes.
Watermarks: A better DRM than DRM itself?
On 2005-12-07 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/267
David Berlind at ZDNet blogs talks about TiVo’s move to use watermark instead of DRM in their latest TiVoToGo service. Finally a breath of fresh air, I hope this trend continues.
The Calgary corpus Compression Challenge
On 2005-12-07 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/266
On December 3, 2005, the challenge was accepted by Alexander Ratushnyak who sent an entry of size 593620 (payout of $88.25 pending). It continues the series of PAQAR-based entries and requires less than 255 Mb of RAM.
Agility 5.0 Integrates On2 Flash 8 Video Encoding SDK
On 2005-12-05 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/265
On2 Technologies the developer of Flash 8 video tools, announced it has signed a licensing agreement with Anystream in which the two companies will integrate the On2 Flash 8 Video SDK into Anystream’s Agility 5.0 platform.
Near Infinite Data Compression? Not Again!!!
On 2005-12-05 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/264
Random data compression claims are nothing new, here is another one. Sigh!!!
Critical RealPlayer Flaw Flagged! Again!
On 2005-12-04 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/263
A few more “unpatched” flaws in RealPlayer. File format bugs (ZLib, GZip, ARJ, JPEG, iTunes, QuickTime and now Real) are becoming frequent news.
New high-definition DVDs to use old video technology?
On 2005-12-04 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/262
ZDNet: As Hollywood readies its new and controversial high-definition DVDs, at least one major studio is leaving some of the most advanced parts of the new disc formats on the table in favor of technology that’s more than a decade old.
Forgent Announces the Results for the 2006 Fiscal First Quarter
On 2005-12-03 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/261
$2.9 Million in IP License Revenues: NetSimplicity Software Revenues Grew by 19%
Motion JPEG2000 at U.S. National Library of Medicine
On 2005-12-01 By Sachin Garg
http://www.c10n.info/archives/260
The U.S. National Library of Medicine recently hosted “Getting to Disk-Based Lossless Digital Video Compression,” a topical meeting that included the first public demonstration of real-time, full-screen, mathematically-lossless video compression and decompression based on the Motion JPEG2000 (MJ2) standard.
Thatz all for last month, to keep track of news as it happens, you can visit http://www.c10n.info
Wish you a happy and successful new year.
Sachin Garg
http://www.sachingarg.com
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