Mobile Broadcasting Corp said it is considering changing the video codec for its digital satellite broadcasting service for mobile devices from MPEG-4 Visual (MPEG-4) to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) after the start of commercial service in mid-October 2004.

Mobile Broadcasting previously said its plan is to use MPEG-4, and it is using MPEG-4 in the test broadcasting currently underway.

According to Mobile Broadcasting, it started studies to consider the change to H.264 about half a year ago, because H.264 has higher coding efficiency and can produce more benefits. H.264 may enable an increase of the number of video channels as well as improved image quality.

Mobile Broadcasting said that for now it is still in the phase of studying possibilities, and has made no final decisions. The biggest challenge is making functional changes to the user terminals after they go on sale. The terminals that can play back MPEG-4 content must be changed to support H.264 as well.

Mobile Broadcasting is considering solving this problem by updating the decoding software. Once it is sure that it can solve these issues, it says would like to make the final decision to change to H.264.

In Korea, a satellite digital television broadcasting service for mobile devices is scheduled to start commercial service using the same satellite that Mobile Broadcasting is using.

A Korean service provider plans to use H.264 for its broadcasting service from the beginning.

In the Wireless Japan 2004 exhibition, held from July 21-23, 2004, Renesas Technology Corp and Texas Instruments Ltd exhibited application processors to be used in mobile phones for H.264 decoding. The processors are targeted for the Korean market, where content distribution service using H.264 has already begun, as well as the Japanese market, in which terrestrial digital television broadcasting for mobile phones is scheduled to start sometime during fiscal 2005.

From NEAsia Online