PALO ALTO, CA. – Jan 31, 2013 – Eye IO, LLC (eyeIO) today announced its leading video compression encoding technology is the first in the encoding and streaming industry to attain THX® certification, signifying a major achievement of the highest standards of quality and performance in digital video at record low-bandwidth.

As the leader in certification of world-class digital cinemas, premium audio systems, 3D and 4K/Ultra HD TVs, and blockbuster movies, THX identified eyeIO as a company sharing its dedication to progressing the delivery of professional content without compromise of fidelity or video quality and as a trailblazer in HD and Ultra HD Internet video streaming technology. As such, eyeIO becomes the first in the video streaming industry to receive the new THX Digital Cinema Encoder certification, a rigorous testing program that employs sophisticated, state-of-the-art digital picture quality analysis where THX golden-eye experts validate the video output of a professional grade encoder.

With the excitement in the industry over Ultra HD, H.265 and the next-generation TV, the ability to deliver THX Digital Cinema HD quality over the Internet is groundbreaking. The term “HD quality” for Internet streaming has been heavily debated, and broadly marketed, with no real consensus on exactly how to measure or validate true Digital Cinema HD quality other than possibly comparing the experience to Blu-ray picture—until now. Digital Cinema publishers can now expect their professional productions to be seen in true 1920x1080p high definition and be assured that their viewers will see their content as intended through eyeIO’s THX® Certified video compression.

“We are extremely impressed with eyeIO’s encoding technology performance and the consistent results it produces, delivering amazing picture quality,” said Chris Golson, senior director, business development, THX Ltd. “Until now, evaluation of quality has been unreliably subjective as is often affected by inappropriate setups. eyeIO is paving the way for higher quality digital video performance, and we are pleased to be a part of it by establishing a new professional benchmark for outstanding Digital Cinema HD video over the Internet.”

The new THX Digital Cinema HD Video Encoder certification program tests 46 critical data points in six major categories using evaluation test material developed by the top seven Hollywood studios to produce a score that objectively assesses picture quality. A THX score of 90 on a scale of 100 is considered ‘THX Excellent Quality’ and eyeIO’s H.264 First-generation encoder was able to produce an exceptional 95.528 score at an Internet streaming bitrate of 5.8 Mbps—an astonishing performance metric in today’s professional digital media.

“eyeIO’s technical team is deeply honored by the THX certification of its H.264 Internet video delivery technology and the standard it will set for the industry,” said Rodolfo Vargas, CEO of eyeIO. “For too long, the industry has referred to ‘HD’ video with no trustworthy and comprehensive method for validating true, professional high-quality digital cinema 1080p HD. We are hopeful that through our work with THX, we will be able to define a new level of quality for digital cinema HD video content broadcasting.”

eyeIO will keynote at the Seventh International Workshop on Video Processing and Quality Metrics for Consumer Electronics (VPQM) conference sponsored by Intel. The THX certified technology will be showcased and discussed by CEO Rodolfo Vargas on Friday, February 1^st, 2013.

About eyeIO
EYE IO, LLC (eyeIO) is a privately held, Palo Alto based startup developing breakthrough H.264 and H.265 solutions that represent the culmination of years of progressive research in next generation TV video delivery. eyeIO H.264 first and second generation technology enables cloud video engines, on-demand video services and over-the-top (OTT) ventures to provide premium video over today’s global Internet infrastructure at a low record cost bandwidth and operation. With more than 98 billion eyeIO frames encoded today, it enables its customers to deliver the highest consistent video quality to connected devices worldwide, including tablets, smart 3D TVs and Ultra HD TVs with unsurpassed playback speed, device compatibility and production stability. Visit www.eyeio.com to learn more.

Media Contact:
Emilee McConkie
For eyeIO
pr@eyeio.com
(650) 763-8736 ext. 700

THX is a trademark of THX Ltd., registered in the U.S. and other jurisdictions.  All rights reserved.

Making sure that 4K was right up there in the headlines, it said that it was pushing H.264 even further than before, encoding video 45% faster and reducing bitrates by a further 26% over its first generation tech, which was released back in February 2012. And back then it was talking about 20% -50% bandwidth reductions, depending on whether clients wanted existing quality or something even better.

Close to their chests
Not much is known about exactly how eyeIO’s codec works – in fact, all in all it’s a company that likes to play its cards close to its chest – though it does reveal that it uses what’s billed as a “revolutionary artificial intelligence” approach to encoding and trumpets the fact that to date 65bn video frames have been produced via its software with a record of zero software crashes. Yes, zero.

This is all fairly significant, as eyeIO’s single, announced customer so far just happens to be Netflix, who has been using the software to deliver its higher quality streams over the past couple of months without setting data cap alarm bells ringing at ISPs across the USA. The company would love to offer a 4k service, but ISPs are fighting back hard against any such bandwidth hogging activities, so any technology that could deliver the format without the subsequent increase in bandwidth is going to be hugely popular.

HEVC
Of course, HEVC (H.265) is the direction all this is eventually going to take, but that will take time to deploy (the standard isn’t even ratified yet) and also require new chipsets. eyeIO’s technology uses all the existing H.264 equipment currently out there, meaning that potentially Netflix could launch a 4k service significantly in advance of any of its rivals.

All this is speculation, of course, with neither eyeIO or Netflix willing to comment in any depth on the rumours of an imminent 4k launch. But it is interesting to note that eyeIO says its StudioRes product is available for both package media and internet streaming delivery “to bring no-compromise pictures to the next generation of 85in and larger UltraHD/4K screens ” which seems a bit of a clue.

Oh, and it’s also working on eyeIO.265, a port of its eyeIO technology to the forthcoming HEVC. It will be very interesting to see if it can keep ahead of the bandwidth curve there too.