For Australia's remote rural web users, relying on a dial-up modem has meant that video technology is still a long way off. But a new video streaming technology, developed by a Western Australian company, has solved the problem of buffering, which causes streaming video to stop and start every few moments, as a result of insufficient bandwidth.

"For the foreseeable future, low bandwidth is it," said Rod Ward, marketing director of video streaming company, Computer TeleVision. Computer TeleVision's video streaming technology is created for the low bandwidth currently on offer to most people. "This is a technology for here and now," Ward said.

Over an Australian phone line, the bandwidth is really only 30,000 to 33,000 bits per second, Ward explains. "This is well under what a 56K modem can accept. We mostly build our streams for a 28K modem."

Buffering problems are avoided, because the information flows in and out at equal speed, he said.

The viewer gets two or three frames per second, not quite full motion, which has a frame rate of around 25 per second, but slightly jerky, as frames are dropped.

"Anyone, even with a woeful phone line," can get these pictures, Ward said.

At the heart of this technology is HartStream, named after its creator, and the founder of Computer TeleVision, Mark Hart. HartStream is a video optimisation process that gives images better clarity by removing the pixelation.

"The biggest difference between our software and others is the clarity," Ward said. "Our full screen resolution is quite high."

The company started out producing training videos on cassette and CD-ROM for Microsoft Office among others, and the idea grew from there. Now it consults and develops Internet video streaming, online seminars and does multimedia warehousing.

Computer TeleVision has just finished producing a video of the launch of Microsoft Windows 2000 earlier this year. "Illustrated audio" is what Frank Arrigo, business development manager for Microsoft Windows Media is calling it. The technology is well suited for information delivery services, such as talking head and conference speakers, he said.

An initiative by the Western Australian government, aimed at bringing remote outback communities and towns together using the Internet, has made use of the video streaming technology.

A two-day government conference on online communities, called CASOC-Creating and Sustaining Online Communities-was held in WA last month and filmed by Computer TeleVision. The day's events were put on the Internet that night for "virtual delegates" to view the next day, according to Ward.

Even when broadband Internet access finally arrives, "not everyone will have access to it," Ward said. "Low bandwidth streaming is suitable for outback areas that only have a normal telephone line. It's one technology tailor-made for delivering services to the outback, so the outback would have services just as good as the city," Ward said. "You won't get optical fibres across your front door there."

The benefits of the technology are twofold according to Michael Ashford, team leader for strategic directions in the Office of Information and Communications in WA. People who could not attend the conference were able to watch the proceedings on the Internet. The WA government is also using the technology as a training tool.

In these areas "there is a high degree of awareness of what technology can do, and with it a high demand to get it," Ashford said. The training medium of video means online training is much more personal and easier to learn from.
www.computertelevision.com.au

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