News for Sunday, 30 April 2006

The Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (French National Institute for Audio and video) has launched its Video On Demand (VOD) service.
The system is fully multi-platforms and is currently proposing over 100 000 audio and video shows, 80% of them being free, while the remaining part can be purchased (from 1 to 12 euros) or rented (for 1 to 3 euros).
They are using QuickTime and Divx, making the offer available for Mac, Linux and Windows.
The free audio and video contents are available as::
Video:
MPEG4 SP (mp4)  320x240 pixels
380 kbits/s (340 kbits/s video + 40 kbits/s audio aac mono)
Audio:
MPEG2 Layer 3 (mp3)
24kbits/s CBR
joint-stereo 22050 Hz
Audio and video files that can be bought or rented are available as:
Video:
MPEG4 ASP (avi) 576x 432 pixels
1128 kbits/s (1000 kbits/s video + 128 kbits/s audio mp3 stereo 48 Khz )
Audio:
Fichier MPEG1 Layer 3 (mp3)
192 kbits/s CBR
stereo 48KHz
To enjoy this gold mine of information users will need:
- Cable of ADSL connection (512Kb/s minimum)
- OS : Windows XP or 2000, Macintosh OSX or Linux
- Player : Quicktime, VLC, Mplayer, Realplayer, DivXplayer
- Web browser : Explorer, Firefox, Safari…
- Connection speed : 512 Kbps
Audio and video files are protected by DRM and watermarks to ensure that intellectual properties are not lost, but it does not prevent end users to enjoy audio and video contents (play video on different computers or burn archives on CD)
The INA has used a watermark system developed by Thomson, it is invisible for the users, and a Divx DRM that only allows the person who purchased or rented the video content to play it
Direct link to the "Archive for all" program is available from the following link:
http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php
While "only" 100 000 shows are currently available, INA archive includes over 500 000 hours of video, 600 000 hours of audio and over 1 million photos. Of course the launch of this service has been a huge success, over 6 millions connections for the first day.