A German-based research organization, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (IIS), has announced that Harmonic has licensed its MPEG-4 High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) and MPEG-1 Layer-2 audio coding software for its DiviCom Electra family of broadcast encoders. Harmonic has integrated the speed optimized Fraunhofer DSP audio software in a multichannel audio card as an option for its Electra multichannel compression platform.
The Electra 7000 HD and Electra 5400 SD H.264 encoders are used in broadcast, satellite, cable and telco IPTV headends and in studios for real-time encoding of HDTV and SDTV content. Fraunhofer's HE-AAC and Layer-2 software delivers discrete multichannel audio quality at bit rates as low as 128kb/s.
With the widespread rollout of multiple digital channels with 5.1 or 7.1 audio, Harmonic saw a need for a codec that offered efficiencies in both cost and bandwidth. According to the firm, the HE AAC from Fraunhofer IIS was selected for its high quality and easy adaptability across a vast array of digital audio applications.
MPEG-4 HE-AAC is one of the most widely adopted audio codecs in mobile multimedia, digital radio and TV broadcasting, and is the de-facto standard for music download services on mobile phones. MPEG-1 Layer-2 is the audio compression scheme used on DVD and DTV transmissions.
For more information, visit www.fraunhofer.de/ and www.harmonicinc.com/.
