Readers of this space are already well aware that Euclid Discoveries has updated their web site with a great deal of information about their video coding technology. Now the rest of the world is going to hear about too, as the PR machinery has been kicked into first gear.

This press release is just a pointer to the new information on the web site, which includes:

• the complete patent portfolio
• video examples of EuclidVision in action
• the company’s Disposition Report of P2 – a specific implementation of the technology

I think the press release also contains a very nice, concise, description of what Euclid claims to be bringing to the party:

EuclidVision™ … extends the block-based compression paradigm to take advantage of features and objects in the video. These features and objects provide a foothold for engaging more advanced modeling, bridging the macroblocks of conventional compression to feature modeling and object modeling techniques.

What we really need next is some independent testing on the details of this advanced object modeling. Specific questions remaining to be answered include:

• Is the modeling compatible with existing H.264 players? Or will users of ED technology require new codecs to view media compressed with eFlex?
• If we compress representative video scenes with AVC High Profile and eFlex such that subjective video quality is identical, what are the bandwidth gains?
• What is the cost to the encoder of feature modeling?
• What is the cost to the decoder of feature modeling?
• How much feature modeling can be done automatically?

Since Euclid’s publicly stated exit strategy is a sale of either the entire company or its key technologies, these questions will obviously have to be answered. Any buyer will need these in order to be able to tell their stockholders that they have performed due diligence.

At this point there is no public information on when these points will be fleshed out. I would guess that the first people to get some hint about the answers will be those with bulging checkbooks. We hoi polloi will have to wait for whatever scraps come out of the process.