It’s Official: MPEG-4 h.264 has Arrived

The EBU’s Hans Hoffman reported at HPA today that EBU tests have found that MPEG-4 h.264 encoders have finally reached a level of performance that delivers on the promise of 50% bandwidth savings vs. MPEG-2. The EBU tested encoders from Ateme, Harmonic, Tandberg, Thomson, and Scientific-Atlanta.

“All of them performed very well and the 50% gain has been reached,” said Hoffman. “With some content it is even better than 50%.”

In terms of bandwidth needed for “critical material but not unduly so” performance recommendations are: 10.5 Mbps for 720p/50; 12.1 Mbps for 1440×1080i/25; and 12.8 Mbps for 1920×1080p/25.

Source: Sports Video Group