Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 01:28:37 -0700 From: Amancio Hasty <hasty@rah.star-gate.com> To: Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it> Cc: tinguely@plains.NoDak.edu, freebsd-multimedia@FreeBSD.ORG, sales@omt.com Subject: Re: Regard to phone call about FreeBSD drivers Message-ID: <199708260828.BAA00841@rah.star-gate.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 22 Aug 1997 14:58:59 %2B0200." <199708221258.OAA16039@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>
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Okay,
Well, OmniMedia is very happy to provide us with all the tech info
that we will need to write a driver for their mpeg encoder / decoder /
full duplex audio PCI card (phew thats a mouthful) but wait there is
more the cards video / audio components are fully programmable.
The break down is this :
1. Bt848 PCI + tuner / *true* full-duplex soundcard provide a very
low cost solution for audio / video conferencing.
Assuming that the Bt848 card costs $100 , a decent full duplex
sound card around $120 . Thats about $220 to $250.
If you already own a full duplex audio card then you save $120 or so.
All encoding/decoding done in software. real time mpeg encoding for
audio / video is out.
2. OmniMedia's PCI board:
video capture for software encoding / decoding using dec's
21230 video codec chipset.
video engine on the board is programmable and so far there is
microcode for h.261 and mpeg . In the near future , h.263 will
available.
full duplex audio plus echo cancellation via Analog's ADSP 2181
supported codecs:
mpeg, g.711, g.722, g.728
I hope that we can use the hardware for H.323 conferencing which
is of huge value given the licensing / patent issues surrounding
h.323 . I think that the starting licensing fee for h.323 is around
$100,000. We can use the publicly available implementation for
h.263 which is part of h.323 however we are at risk that at any
time anyone can demand royalty payments -- I for one I am not
willing to get involved in writing an 263 codec and the one floating
around the net needs a lot of work.
The OEM version of the mpeg/decoder board I think it sells for
$390 so the card is a little high however a lot cheaper than
mpeg encoder/decoder boards of just about a year ago.
Thats all folks for now till I get programming info on the
board and have a driver for it 8)
Enjoy,
Amancio
>From The Desk Of Luigi Rizzo :
> > Hi,
> > Spoke briefly with Dr. Redi . Basically, I am going to meet him tomorrow
> > and just chat a bit more. I have dealt with OmniMedia in the past .
> > Briefly, cause I am still at wor, does anyone have any cool ideas
> > for next generation audio/video hardware -- desired codecs,
> > telephony support, full duplex audio. etc,...
>
> Mark said almost everything on procedural issues (i.e. the need for
> documentation, etc.). I suppose that it would be great to have one PCI
> board which supports both video capture _and_ full duplex audio,
> possibly with some (programmable) intelligence onboard to help in
> compression/decompression tasks...
>
> Cheers
> Luigi
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