Fraunhofer IIS Presents Next Generation Video Telephony on SmartTVs With Full-HD Voice at IFA 2012

BERLIN--(Marketwire - Aug 29, 2012) - IFA Hall 11.1/10 - Fraunhofer IIS, the world's renowned source for audio and multimedia technologies, presents next generation video telephony on SmartTVs at IFA 2012. The audio codec Enhanced Low Delay AAC (AAC-ELD) delivers CD-like audio quality for an unrivaled communication experience, paving the way of SmartTVs as primary communication devices in the living room.

AAC-ELD is the only widely adopted Full-HD Voice technology. Full-HD Voice is the future quality standard for audio communication, taking it to a new dimension. For the first time, phone calls sound as natural and clear as talking to a person in the same room.

At IFA TecWatch in Hall 11.1, visitors of the Fraunhofer booth can now experience how video calls on SmartTVs can be improved by the implementation of AAC-ELD. The presentation at IFA evolved from the ongoing EU project Vconect. In this project capabilities are developed that will allow ad-hoc groups of people to enjoy real-time high-quality audio-video communication.

"Thanks to our AAC-ELD software, communication apps for SmartTVs will allow for conversations at a level of audio quality which so far has been limited to high-end video conferencing or telepresence systems," says Harald Popp, head of the Multimedia Realtime Systems department at Fraunhofer IIS. "As AAC-ELD is already part of all leading smartphone operating systems including iOS and Android, it is high time to finally introduce Full-HD Voice quality to the living room."

Full-HD Voice is the highest audio quality standard for communication applications. Whereas legacy telephony is restricted to an upper limit of 3.4 kHz audio bandwidth, Full-HD Voice capable audio codecs support audio bandwidths of 14 kHz and more which covers the full audible audio bandwidth. Consequently, only Full-HD Voice audio codecs, such as AAC-ELD, can provide a realistic communication experience just like a conversation in the same room.

AAC-ELD is a communication codec based on the commonplace music codec AAC which is used by major music download and streaming platforms. AAC-ELD provides CD-like audio quality for video and telephone calls at very low bit-rates. Thus, most professional video conferencing, telepresence systems as well as consumer video telephony applications such as Apple FaceTime rely on AAC-ELD.

For an interactive quality comparison and more information on Full-HD Voice and AAC-ELD, visit http://www.full-hd-voice.com.

More information on Vconect is available on www.vconect-project.eu/.

About Fraunhofer

The Fraunhofer IIS Audio and Multimedia division, based in Erlangen, Germany, has been working in compressed audio technology for more than 20 years and remains a leading innovator of technologies for cutting-edge multimedia systems. Fraunhofer IIS is universally credited with the development of mp3 and co-development of AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) as well as technologies for the media world of tomorrow, including MPEG Surround and the Fraunhofer Audio Communication Engine.

Through the course of more than two decades, Fraunhofer IIS has licensed its audio codec software and application-specific customizations to at least 1,000 companies. Fraunhofer estimates that it has enabled more than 5 billion commercial products worldwide using its mp3, AAC and other media technologies.

The Fraunhofer IIS organization is part of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, based in Munich, Germany. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is Europe's largest applied research organization and is partly funded by the German government. With 20,000 employees worldwide, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft is composed of 60 Institutes conducting research in a broad range of research areas. For more information, contact Matthias Rose, matthias.rose@iis.fraunhofer.de, or visit www.iis.fraunhofer.de/amm.