Troubled UK compression specialist Eidos Technologies (See Financial section) told Multimedia Futures last week that it hopes to introduce a specialized web streaming product far superior to those already on the market by Christmas. The company which claims it has a video streaming technology in development which will put that of Progressive Software Corp, Microsoft Corp, Apple Computer Corp or VXtreme Inc to shame said it is waiting for the right time to pounce. We want to wait for video streaming technology to mature so we can take advantage of it with our codec, said Jeremy Baldwin sales and marketing manager at Eidos. We are waiting for a high quality play back solution to emerge so we can play back to the mass market. Commenting on Oracle’s specifications for a real time video encoding standard announced last week (CI No 3,224) Baldwin said, This is great news. It allows us to implement our encoding technology. We’ve been waiting for this kind of standard to happen. According to Baldwin, the Oracle Microsoft divide is healthy. Let Ellison and Gates fight it out, it speeds up convergence making it easier for people to use video within web sites and ensures that the codec market continues to grow, he commented. Officials at Eidos Technologies claim that the codec they currently have under development will allow a rate of 8-10 frames per second over PSTN lines or low bandwidth connections and upwards of full frame rate, (between 25-30 frames per second) on full bandwidth networks like Satellite, Cable or ISDN lines. Eidos Technologies is a division of CD-ROM publisher Eidos Plc.
