Motorola has joined the Microsoft Mediaroom Interoperability and Qualification Lab (IQ Lab) for digital video encoders, a program which will enable the interoperability and compliance of encoders used in deployments of the Microsoft Mediaroom multimedia and IPTV software platform.

Entry to the program involved rigorous tests of Motorola’s MPEG-4 encoding platform to deliver full compatibility with the Microsoft Mediaroom platform. As a result, Motorola’s telco customers planning to implement the highly efficient MPEG-4 compression technology now benefit from greatly reduced evaluation time through interoperability with the Microsoft Mediaroom environment.

The product that has passed the IQL interoperability tests is Motorola’s SE-5100 High Definition MPEG-4 AVC encoder. Designed for markets requiring high quality MPEG-4 compression to deliver real time content, it receives video content and converts it to MPEG-4 format for distribution on telco networks for IPTV services.

The inclusion of high speed general purpose processors allows the SE-5100 High Definition MPEG-4 AVC encoder to remain flexible as MPEG4 optimization continues to mature over the next several years. Unlike MPEG2, MPEG4 has hundreds of tools to choose from to be applied within a fixed compute power environment. Carefully selecting the tools to use – as well as optimizing implementation of the tools over time – will enable the SE-5100 to provide excellent video quality over a long period of time.

In a DSL delivery architecture, maintaining a given level of video quality at the lowest possible bitrate can translate into more viewers per household and more viewers per DSLAM – both adding to rapid, deeper subscriber penetration, lower overall system capex and faster system payback.

In addition to high quality HD encoding, the SE-5100 supports the Picture-in-Picture (PIP) mode where the encoder outputs the full resolution TV picture in addition to a small “thumbnail” that can be used in program guides or as a mosaic that is superimposed over the viewer’s main program. The Motorola implementation minimizes network and headend complexity by generating and distributing this low resolution proxy via the same IP interfaces as used for the primary picture.