From Coca Cola commercials to Bollywood movies, Even Technologies has a role to play

Move over Microsoft, enter Even. With a new format that promises to deliver DVD quality video at less than half the file size of conventional video formats, Canadian company Even Technologies is throwing a challenge to the Redmond giant and other developers of video compression technologies.

?The biggest advantage of the PSI_V video compression technology is that it can offer DVD quality video at bitrates of 1.1 Mbps, one-sixth the bitrate of MPEG-2,? Nick Ringma, president and CEO of Even Technolgies, told Metro from the CommunicAsia tradeshow in Singapore, where the company is exhibiting the product.

Video compression refers to making a digital video signal use less data without noticeably reducing the quality of the picture. A variety of standards are currently in use, including MPEG-2, DivX, Windows Media Video and Real Video.

In March this year, a live Internet broadcast of a music concert from Kingston-upon-Hull in the UK ? the ?first ever live streaming of full-screen DVD quality video? ? marked the debut of the PSI_V compression technology. Nine patents have already been issued for the technology, while 11 are pending and a couple more are waiting to be filed, Ringma informed.

?The company we partnered with is also planning to distribute a lot of other content in the UK, including Bollywood movies, using this technology,? offered Ringma.

What prompted the Canadian company to devise a new format was the fact that development of compression technologies was being driven by the ?corporations?. ?The video standards are stuck with the inertia of the major corporations, but Microsoft is not a standard and neither is DivX or Real,? said Ringma. ?So we invested considerable amount of time in developing PSI_V, no matter what others were coming up with.?

The company sees use of the new video format ? developed over a period of eight years ? in various fields. It started out by fitting in 90 minutes of video on a CD for a Coca-Cola ad campaign. Telecom companies like Wyoming, USA?s Silver Star Communications have also deployed the technology in their Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) systems.

With Indian telcos gearing up for ?triple-play? services ? phone, Internet and television on the same cable ? Even is now eyeing the Indian market. ?India is equal to the American market in terms of the current deployment of copper and there should be a huge growth as the market develops. We are interested to see how the companies deliver the services and collect the revenues,? Ringma explained.

The company plans to go through the ?courting stage? in the next few weeks for the Indian market and identify players with the best technology. ?By the third or fourth quarter, we would like to start on the pilot project,? Ringma added.