Transcoding is a life-or-death issue facing manufacturers and service providers as they try to realize the explosive growth in video entertainment. Consumers have an insatiable appetite for immersion in entertainment, and transcoding among multiple formats will be mandatory for all future video products to be successful. Digital signal processing technology will be an essential piece in laying the foundation for transcoding among multiple consumer devices.

As the accelerating video market extends its reach to products such as cell phones, portable media players and automotive infotainment systems, consumers are demanding easy access to their video content throughout the home and on the go. Multi-format transcoding will enable the seamless transmission of video content between all types of video devices.

Transcoding will be essential for the continued evolution of the video entertainment market. Why? Content is king and consumers are demanding that it be easily transportable and available on any device. Transcoding is the ability to take existing video content and change the format, bitrate and/or resolution in order to view it on another video playback device. This is also true for high definition (HD) content where transcoding extends the reach of content beyond the TV, making it possible to send, receive and view HD source content on any video device at any resolution. For more information on HD, check out the links on the left hand side of this web page.

Transcoding a single video format is available today but that will not meet consumers’ needs to easily navigate the changing video environment. The ability to seamlessly view content on any device in real-time requires the need to transcode many video formats, thus multi-format transcoding is key.

Multi-format transcoding is the most important challenge to overcome for manufacturers and service providers to solve before realizing the potential tremendous growth in video. Consumers have an insatiable appetite for immersion in entertainment, and transcoding multiple formats in real-time will be a necessary function for all future video products to be successful.

* This is a collected article.