Ittiam Announces Its Next Generation IP Video Phone Solution

Enables high quality personal multi-way video conferencing on a single digital signal processor

Bangalore. October 26, 2005 --Ittiam Systems today announced the availability of its next generation internet protocol (IP) video phone solution. It offers the latest in video compression technology and delivers video over IP phones with high quality personal multi-way video conferencing capability. The complete solution is achieved on a single digital signal processor (DSP). Target applications include video phones and video conferencing solutions both stand alone and integrated in a larger system like IP set-top-box.

Ittiam’s IP video phone (IPVP) takes advantage of H.264 video coding technology to offer high quality video at a significantly lesser bandwidth compared to H.263 and MPEG4 based phones. The relatively high processing overhead of H.264 based coding has been harnessed through optimal innovative implementation on the DSP including 4 patent pending ideas. All of these have enabled Ittiam’s video phone to achieve 3-way video conferencing at CIF resolution and at 30 frames per second (fps) and even a 4 way conferencing at CIF at 20 fps.

IPVP is a complete software solution accompanied by an application specific reference platform. It supports SIP and offers a framework integrating the media engine, media-controller, call-controller and user-interface manager. The media engine delivers H.264 based video coding for high quality, lower bandwidth scenarios. It also supports H.263 and MPEG4 standards. With H.263 or MPEG4 video coding it allows 2-way calls at VGA resolution at 25 fps or a 5-way call at CIF resolution at 30 fps. The media engine complements the high quality video with a wide range of speech codecs for narrow and wide band voice covering G711, G726, G729ab, G728, G723.1, G722, G722.1, GSM-AMR-WB; acoustic echo canceller for hands free operation and associated telephony / signalling functions. An adaptive jitter buffer provides enhanced quality under adverse network conditions. In addition, the phone automatically adapts bit rate of the video depending on bandwidth availability. It also provides facility to manually adjust video frame-rate or bit rate and enable self view or picture-in-picture mode dynamically during a call.

The application specific reference platform is based on the TMS320DM642™ digital signal processor from Texas Instruments. It is available with built-in keypad, speaker, microphone, camera and 6.4" LCD display complete with Ethernet, wireless LAN, USB and IrDA interface. The platform supports a range of storage devices including hard disk drives and those with a CardBus interface. It is designed to provide OEM customers the ability to rapidly integrate, explore and develop end solutions in a shorter time-to-market.

VoIP and IP Video Phone options are logical extensions in a triple-play IP STB solution. Ittiam’s IPVP solution is engineered for easy integration into emerging IP STBs. A majority of IP-STB solutions employ a powerful DSP for media processing and a RISC processor for networking, user interface and application level protocols. Ittiam’s IPVP offering on TMS320DM642™ is packaged at a DSP sub-system level subsuming all video and speech processing and telephony components with a rich set of application programming interfaces (API) that can be readily integrated within the IP STB application on the RISC processor. Scheduling of the media engine tasks is handled by the DSP sub-system using an operating system (OS) abstraction layer to achieve high-quality lip synchronized playback. With suitable driver level abstractions, the DSP subsystem enables multiple video, speech capture and playback devices to be interfaced to the DSP. The networking and call control framework is also suitably abstracted to be OS and IP stack independent and can run either on the RISC processor or on the DSP itself. In another form, the offering is available as a framework supporting speech, telephony, networking and call control on the RISC processor to provide VoIP capabilities.

"Ittiam’s solution makes it possible to deliver quality video conferencing capability for personal use at home and at offices - standalone or otherwise. Such facility used to be in only in the realm of conference rooms in corporations", said Srini Rajam, chairman and chief executive officer of Ittiam Systems. "Our solution is modular and tuned for integration with larger applications since we believe in the tremendous potential for video phones to reach our homes riding on IP STBs.", he added.

Ittiam IP video phone solution has already been licensed by multiple OEMs and ODMs in Asia for standalone as well as embedded application for IP STBs. The company plans to make the video phone available on two more DSPs from Texas Instruments in the first quarter of 2006 covering lower cost and high performance applications.

About Ittiam

Ittiam Systems Private Limited, headquartered in Bangalore, is a technology product company singularly focussed on digital signal processing systems in media and communication. The company operates through its network of offices and representatives around the world. Ittiam's customers include Fortune 100 companies and are distributed across U.S., Europe, Japan and Asia. In 2004 the company was rated as the ‘World’s Most Preferred DSP IP Supplier’ in a survey conducted by Forward Concepts Incorporated. In 2005 Ittiam has been selected by Red Herring into the top 100 private companies in Asia. For more details, visit www.ittiam.com.