Video Transport is optimized for wireless environments.
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Press Release Summary:
Strongbow(TM), based on Malachi(TM) architecture, provides low-latency solution for video compression and wireless transport. With bandwidth requirements from 750 Kbps to 4 Mbps, it delivers broadcast-quality images in full-color. Hardware is re-programmable and partitioned. Product offers Programmable Channel Optimization and Channel Look-Ahead features, frame rates of 1-30/sec, and real-time encoding/decoding of video, audio, and related data.
Original Press Release:
MemoryLink Launches Strongbow(TM) Video Transport for Wireless Networks
ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill., Feb. 25, 2004 - MemoryLink, Corp., a broadband technology innovator, introduced Strongbow(TM), a high-quality, highly affordable low-latency solution for video compression and wireless transport.
The Strongbow announcement is the second new product introduction made at Broadband Wireless World 2004 in San Diego. On Tuesday, MemoryLink launched a truly low-cost, highly reliable alternative to traditional T1 data transmission lines. Introduced as Flanger(TM), Wi-Fi service providers, broadband carriers, enterprises and organizations with campus-like environments, now have access to a reliable yet low-cost remedy that enables point-to-point tunneling of T1 and E1 across dedicated, point-to-point wireless Ethernet devices such as the Canopy(TM) Wireless Broadband Platform from Motorola.
"Like Flanger, Strongbow is optimized for wireless environments, including Ethernet radios," said Thomas A. Freeburg, MemoryLink chief operating officer. "Strongbow's unique design provides for the delivery of video within a reasonable bandwidth environment that is humanly imperceptible of any delay," Freeburg continued.
While video compression and transport technology is not necessarily new, high-quality, low-latency video that requires minimal bandwidth is. Security firms, for example, have deployed video surveillance technology for years, but with low-resolution imagery and slow frame rates, as well as colorless screens of black and white. Strongbow, on the other hand, delivers broadcast-quality images in full color. Yet Strongbow's bandwidth requirements range from 750 Kbps to 4 Mbps, depending on the requirement for frame rate and quality.
At one U.S. commercial airport, Strongbow is already getting rave reviews where field testing is under way. Because a portion of the airport is isolated from the rest of the complex, low-latency, broadcast quality video is giving security personnel the "eyes" they need to ensure the safety of passengers and airport personnel alike, especially when tragedy can strike in a matter of seconds.
Another successful field application involves an East Coast TV station and a cable company that needed a multiple hop and a split signal from a coastal island to the mainland. The local station wanted its signal included on the cable at two different locations. The Strongbow-Canopy combination solved the problem while saving the station time and money. The TV station now has its signal injected at the two cable head-end locations for delivery to all of the cable customers.
For some senior citizens at a nursing home in the Midwest, getting out to church on Sundays just isn't possible anymore. So instead, the church delivers Sunday services to the nursing home congregation thanks to another Strongbow-Canopy technology collaboration.
Strongbow's design is based on the Malachi(TM) architecture, MemoryLink's exclusive approach to product innovation. With the Malachi architecture, hardware becomes reprogrammable and is partitioned to fit the problem thanks to shapeware, the shared understanding between hardware and software. Shapeware makes Strongbow, Flanger and other MemoryLink products entirely reconfigurable so that each product can modify itself when a problem so demands. This means scalability with much greater dimension resulting in agile, interactive systems that shift the power from product to user. Like people growing wiser from age and experience, the Malachi architecture supports products that actually become "smarter" over time.
Shapeware helps protect investments in legacy equipment while ensuring that no barriers are created to prevent users from moving forward with new technological and equipment enhancements. Through the use of shapeware, MemoryLink has eliminated any threat of product or technology obsolescence because of its exclusive built-in design feature that permits on-site reprogramming of both hardware and software. A remote reprogramming capability will be added soon to further help protect legacy equipment investments, while offering users even greater value and savings as time - and technologies - advance.
A feature unique to Strongbow, Channel Look-Ahead, continuously estimates the variation of the video arrival time. This capability, along with Strongbow's Programmable Channel Optimization feature, addresses the potential for changing conditions that affect network throughput while providing for dynamically variable or constant bit rates up to 7 Mbps and frame rates of 1-to-30 per second.
Strongbow's main features include:
· High-quality, real-time encoding and decoding of video, audio and related data
· Support of NTSC (526/60 @ 30 Fps)
· Frame rates of 1, 5, 6, 7.5, 10, 15, and 30 Fps
· Support of dynamically variable and constant video bit rates of up to 7 Mbps
· Audio/video streaming I/O via Ethernet
· Support of stereo and mono audio input/output
· Audio sampling rates of 11, 22, and 44.1 Khz
· Support of 16, 12, and 8-bit audio samples
Since 1998, MemoryLink has excelled in broadband technology development, video compression technologies, manufacturing and wireless communications to help connect where people are and where they want to be as they discover the unbounded possibilities that wireless broadband offers for visual, audio and tactile communications. To this end, MemoryLink develops the most advanced integrated technology solutions for the transmission of high-quality, low-latency digital multimedia in the unlicensed 5 GHz (UNII) band for fixed and mobile applications.
