The world’s first live high-definition broadcast using MPEG-4 compression over an ADSL2+ broadband network took place in a demonstration at the French Open Tennis Tournament.
France Telecom, Alcatel, Tandberg and Broadcom collaborated on the HDTV over ADSL2+ technology demonstration at the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris.
A reference design IPTV set-top box from Broadcom was used to decode and display the high-definition material encoding using MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC, also known as H.264.
“The success of this demonstration reinforces our view that Broadcom is a very credible and capable HD AVC technology partner for France Telecom,” said Pascal Viginier, who heads research and development for France Telecom.
Last December Envivio demonstrated high-definition MPEG-4 over the Free ADSL2+ network on the first anniversary of the launch of the Freebox TV service in France. In that case the material was compressed using a non-realtime encoder.
ADSL2+ is a standard for broadband connections that provides up to 24Mbps for lines less than 1.5km from the exchange, compared to a maximum of 8Mbps for standard ADSL broadband.
The use of ADSL2+ will support one or more high-definition video streams to be provided over a standard telephone line using internet protocol television or IPTV.
In the UK, BT is understood to be set to trial ADSL2+, while cable company NTL has already tested the technology.