High-Quality Digital Radio Mondiale Stations Now on the Air with Coding Technologies' aacPlus; 11 Digital Short-Wave and AM Stations Begin Official Broadcasts Using aacPlus Today.Business & High-Tech Editors GENEVA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 16, 2003 Coding Technologies, the leading provider of standards-based audio compression for digital broadcasting, announced today at the World Radio Communications Conference (WRC WRC World Rally Championship (auto racing) WRC World Radiocommunication Conference WRC Water Resource Center WRC Women's Resource Center WRC Welding Research Council WRC Water Research Commission (South Africa) 2003) in Geneva Geneva, canton and city, Switzerland Geneva (jənē`və), Fr. Genève, canton (1990 pop. 373,019), 109 sq mi (282 sq km), SW Switzerland, surrounding the southwest tip of the Lake of Geneva. , that 11 broadcasters worldwide have started official radio services using the company's aacPlus in the Digital Radio Mondiale (communications) Digital Radio Mondiale - (DRM) A form of monaural digital broadcast using carrier frequencies below 30 MHz. DRM uses MPEG-4 AAC Main Profile and SBR at data rates of 16-25 kbps. http://drm.org/. standard. Digital Radio Mondiale debuts as the second aacPlus-based digital broadcast system available to the mass market. The International open standard for broadcasting in the Long-, Medium-, and Short-wave bands provides FM-like audio quality and is expected to revive these frequency bands with a worldwide reach. British Broadcast Corporation BBC BBC in full British Broadcasting Corp. Publicly financed broadcasting system in Britain. A private company at its founding in 1922, it was replaced by a public corporation under royal charter in 1927. , Voice of America Voice of America, broadcasting service of the United States Information Agency, est. 1942. Originally set up as a means of fighting the cold war, the Voice of America produces and broadcasts radio programs in English and foreign languages to other countries in order , Deutsche Welle, DeutschlandRadio, Radio Netherlands, Radio Canada International Radio Canada International (RCI) is the international broadcasting service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). History The early years (1942–1953) , Radio France International, and Swedish Radio are among the first stations to commit to this inaugural broadcast date. Due to the transmission conditions of the frequency bands below 30 MHz, the unrivalled coding efficiency of aacPlus made it the premier choice in order to guarantee highest audio quality even at these bandwidth restrained channels. Using Coding Technologies' aacPlus at 21 Kbps mono, Digital Radio Mondiale broadcasts provide a digital quality superior to local FM mono broadcasts. "Deutsche Welle is proud to be ushering in a new era in digital broadcasting for Long-, Medium-, and Short-wave," said Peter Senger, Director of Technology at Deutsche Welle and chairman of Digital Radio Mondiale. "The coding efficiency provided by aacPlus is the key factor for Digital Radio Mondiale's audio quality, transforming our Short-wave broadcasts from a far-away, tiny voice into a clear friend sitting right next to you." "The debut of the Digital Radio Mondiale is very exciting, and we're pleased that our aacPlus is powering this important system," stated Martin Dietz, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. and President of Coding Technologies. "With Digital Radio Mondiale, we are supporting a globally unique standard on a truly compelling technical level." Digital Radio Mondiale receivers are available today from Coding Technologies, BBC, Thales, Fraunhofer, and Merlin. Receivers from the major consumer electronics manufacturers are expected to begin shipping in 2004. Digital Radio Mondiale broadcasts will originate around the world as the system migrates to replace older analog Short-wave and AM systems. More information about Digital Radio Mondiale can be found at http://www.drm.org/. About MPEG-4 aacPlus MPEG-4 aacPlus, standardized as MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group) An ISO/ITU standard for compressing digital video. Pronounced "em-peg," it is the universal standard for digital terrestrial, cable and satellite TV, DVDs and digital video recorders (DVRs). High-Efficiency AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) An audio compression technology that is part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards. AAC, especially MPEG-4 AAC, provides greater compression and better sound quality than MP3, which also came out of the MPEG standard. , is the combination of MPEG AAC and Coding Technologies' SBR (Spectral Band Replication (audio, compression) Spectral Band Replication - (SBR) Guessing the nontransmitted higher frequency range of a compressed audio file by some helper bits (transmiited with the stream) and the transmitted base band. ) technology. SBR is a unique bandwidth extension technique, which enables audio codecs to deliver the same quality at half the bit rate. SBR is a backward- and forward-compatible method to enhance the efficiency of any audio codec. As a result, aacPlus delivers streaming and downloadable 5.1 multichannel audio at 128 Kbps, CD-quality stereo at 48 Kbps, excellent quality stereo at 32 Kbps, and excellent quality for mixed content at 20 Kbps mono and below. This level of efficiency fundamentally enables new applications in the markets of Internet, mobile, and digital broadcast. About Coding Technologies Coding Technologies provides the best audio compression for mobile, broadcasting, and Internet. SBR(TM) (Spectral Band Replication) from Coding Technologies is a backward- and forward-compatible method to enhance the efficiency of any audio codec, putting the "PRO" in mp3PRO and the "Plus" in aacPlus. SBR is a fundamental enabler of the Digital Radio Mondiale open standard and is a core component of MPEG-4 High Efficiency AAC. Coding Technologies is a privately held company privately held company A firm whose shares are held within a relatively small circle of owners and are not traded publicly. with offices in Sweden, Germany, and Silicon Valley. Founded in 1997 in Stockholm, the company later merged with a spin-off of the renowned Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, the inventor of MP3. Coding Technologies' customers include XM Satellite Radio, Thomson Multimedia, Musicmatch, and Texas Instruments. For more information, visit http://www.codingtechnologies.com. |
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