Coding Technologies’ aacPlus adopted by WorldDAB as the new audio codec in DAB

Coding Technologies, which provides audio compression for digital broadcasting, mobile media, and the Internet, announced on Tuesday at the 12th WorldDAB General Assembly held in Seoul, Korea, that the company’s flagship product, aacPlus™, has been adopted by WorldDAB as the new audio codec in Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) according to the Eureka 147 standard.

The WorldDAB technical specifications also support MPEG Surround, the brand-new fully backward compatible multichannel option that paves the way to simulcast multichannel without spending additional spectrum.

DAB with MPEG-4 aacPlus is the first choice in evolving markets such as China and Australia for digital broadcasting. In Europe, markets with a slow adoption of the DAB standard can easily switch to aacPlus, immediately offering new opportunities to broadcasters. In established markets such as the UK, the use of both the new audio codec alongside the existing Layer-2 allows broadcasters to add new services in the available spectrum.

“The bandwidth savings achieved by the usage of aacPlus in DAB makes it possible that all Australian broadcasters - both commercial and governmental - will be able to broadcast digitally. This is a major step forward for DAB in making this technology more attractive to spectrum regulators,” commented Joan Warner, CEO Commercial Radio Australia.

MPEG-4 aacPlus is already standardised in all digital mobile TV technologies, including DVB-H, MediaFlo, ISDB 1-seg and T-DMB, the worldwide standard based on DAB. In addition, aacPlus is a standard feature in a growing list of more than 200 media/entertainment products from companies such as Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Alcatel, Casio, Hitachi, Kyocera, LG, Siemens and Toshiba. Coding Technologies estimates there will be more than 100 million mobile devices supporting aacPlus by the end of 2006.

Source: Media Network, Coding Technologies via Mike Barraclough

Latest news stories..

• Get our news headlines for your website • Submit your news story