Fujitsu: In H.264 Hardware Encoding-Decoding We Trust

The video-encoding format seems to have bright future. But if it offers more compression than MPEG-2 and other earlier formats, it requires heavy computing resources for both encoding and decoding video. To evaluate the CPU loading, you can try playing in QT a HD video from Apple website, it requires 80% of a single core Xeon 3.0GHz, and you will need at least a dual G4 or a Core Duo to be able to play it properly.
As initiated by ATI with its Avivo technology, most of future graphic cards should offer H.264 decoding as a standard feature. Apple and others could also try to improve applications/algorithm for playing H.264 HD videos.
The other solution might come from a dedicated chip, as the one available from Fujitsu. Its features look promising, and the potential market is huge as it might find its way in standalone players, as well as in computer motherboards, optical drive or even mobile video devices.

Product Features
1. Real-time compression and decompression of HDTV video and sound
Capable of real-time compression and decompression of high-definition video (maximum up to 1440 dots x 1080 lines) using H.264 High Profile Level 4.0 format, with simultaneous compression and decompression of sound in Dolby Digital(4) format. This is the first time in the industry that these processing features have been integrated onto a single chip for general use (according to internal research as of November 2006).
2. Embedded memory enables smaller size and lower power consumption
This is also the industry's first H.264-supportive LSI featuring two pieces of embedded 256Mbit (MB) FCRAM , with optimized design that combines logic and memory on one LSI chip, enabling a more compact size and lower power consumption.
3. Proprietary compression and image-enhancement technology
The new chip has a proprietary "self-tuning" algorithm developed by Fujitsu Laboratories that automatically applies lighter compression method to high-action zones where compression artifacts are most noticeable, such as human faces or slow-moving objects, and stronger compression method in other zones. This enables image data size to be reduced to one-half to one-third that of the MPEG-2 format at an equivalent level of image quality.

While waiting for this chips to be inside our Macs, on can encode video into H.264 thanks to the x264 QuickTime Codec version 1.1. This codec is faster, provides a better rendering, and offers more features than Apple's one.