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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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