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Viewing report
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World Video Encoders and Transcoders Markets
Frost & Sullivan, Dec 2007, Pages: 121
This Frost & Sullivan research titled World Video Encoders and Transcoders Market presents a comprehensive overview of video encoders used for applications including broadcast and enterprise. Based on extensive research and inputs gathered from leading vendors, service providers and system integrators, this study provides insights on market and technology trends, pricing trends and vendor profiles. In this research, Frost & Sullivan's expert analysts thoroughly examine markets for MPEG-2, AVC/ VC-1 standard-definition, high-definition encoders and multi-format transcoders.
Technologies
The following technologies are covered in this research:
- Digital Encoding
- Streaming Video
Market Overview
Government Mandates for Digitization Spur Market Growth
The digital video encoders and transcoders market is on an accelerated growth path, especially as governments in various parts of the world are stepping up their efforts to transition from analog to digital video services. These initiatives are driven with the objective of freeing up spectrum to deploy more channels, and providing other services such as high definition television and interactive applications. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States has dictated its deadline as February 2009 for analog switch-off. While the European Commission has called on all member states to set 2012 as their target, a few countries in Europe have announced their switch-off date in 2010.
However, with more than 20 vendors worldwide and emerging vendors competing on price and technology, the market is becoming increasingly commoditized. 'In an attempt to launch compression equipment supporting newer formats and with efficient technologies, many vendors entered the video encoders and transcoders market at low price points, some of them at half the price of existing products,' notes the analyst of this research service. 'The effect trickled down through the entire market and in 2006, the video encoders and transcoders market witnessed sales at 50-70 percent of the listed price by some vendors.'
Increased Competition among Service Providers Driving the Need for Superior Encoding Technologies
While digital video services were a barebones battle between cable and satellite operators until 2004, this has intensified with the emergence of other avenues such as IPTV, Internet and mobile media. For multi-service operators (MSOs), digitization means a larger share of spectrum that can be made available for high-definition services and hence a competitive edge over emerging participants. In the case of IPTV services, providers will eventually be required to build out their infrastructure and make high definition (HD) services available if they want to be on par with cable services. Considering all this, service operators are scrambling for encoding systems and services that can provide best video quality at low bit rates. Moreover, the need to provide video-on-demand (VOD), archive their content resources and additional systems for redundancy, is expected to increase the demand for encoding and transcoding solutions over the forecast period.
Overall, MPEG-2 is still the predominant format for digital video compression in the market and MPEG-2-only encoders accounted for nearly 49 percent of all deployments in 2006. MPEG-2 is still the dominant format for real time encoding among cable and satellite operators and as most of the installed set-top boxes support MPEG-2, service providers prefer to broadcast in this format. With regard to the other formats, while the AVC/VC-1 SD market is expected to grow at over 10 percent over the forecast period in terms of units deployed, the AVC/VC-1 HD market is expected to grow at over 20 percent. 'Regions which are just beginning to go digital are expected to adopt AVC as their preferred format for standard-definition (SD) and HD television,' says the analyst. 'In addition, the market is expected to see growing demand for multi-format transcoders, as convergence becomes a reality and content providers seek consolidated solutions to enable them distribution of rich media to a variety of devices.'
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