Agosto

Researchchannel Transmits Full Bandwidth HD over High - Speed Network

Cairns, North Queensland

ResearchChannel, an industry leader in Internet distribution of quality content, demonstrated the first successful transmission of full bandwidth High Definition (HD) 1080i video between two desktop computers using high speed networking technology at the Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) conference in Cairns, Australia today. Conference attendees were treated to three HD video clips streamed at a sustained data rate of 1.5 gigabits per second.

"The quality of video was fascinating," stated Dae Young Kim, professor at Chungnam National University in Daejeon, South Korea, and CEO of Advanced Network Forum (ANF), a voluntary nonprofit community for users of research and education networks in Korea. "The demo exemplified the future of bandwidth-hungry video transmission and applications. The emergence of a cyber platform of performing arts, for example, has become immediate."

This development demonstrates the possibility in the near future of a whole range of applications including new opportunities in telemedicine, remote sensing instrumentation and digital cinema using advanced networks at speeds of over 3,000 times those of commercial broadband networks or more than 40,000 times the speed of DSL.

George McLaughlin, director of international developments for Australia's Academic and Research Network (AARNet), commented that, "The ability to transmit uncompressed High Definition video is one of a number of exciting uses of broadband networks and brings new opportunities not only for scientists but for a wider audience of viewers around the world." AARNet is cooperating with Research Channel to implement High Definition streaming into the new AARNet 3 network, which will provide high-speed access across the Australian continent to serve the needs of the research and education community in that country.

The technology for this experiment was developed by engineers at the University of Washington, a ResearchChannel participant, and demonstrated a previously unattainable level of reliable data traffic between two Windows XP platform computers. The uncompressed HD files for the test were stored on two PCI-X Dual 2.8GHz XEON computers donated by Intel Corporation of Beaverton, Ore. A Xena HD video capture board donated by AJA Video Systems of Grass Valley, Calif., generated the video output.

APAN is a non-profit international consortium established in 1997 as a high-performance network for research and development of advanced next generation applications and services in the Asia-Pacific region.
ResearchChannel is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 by a consortium of leading research universities, institutions and corporate research centers dedicated to creating a widely accessible voice for research through video and Internet channels. For more information about ResearchChannel, please call (877) 616-7265 or visit the web site at www.researchchannel.org./