Shanghai, China — Score one for the underdog. Backers of China’s domestic codec scored a minor, but cherished, victory earlier this month when the country’s second-largest wired-telecom company picked it over H.264 for an Internet Protocol television (IPTV) rollout.
The design win at China Netcom gives the Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS) the break it needs to stay alive in a world quickly becoming dominated by MPEG-4/ H.264. It also signals that the Chinese government, where possible, will actively support commercialization of its standards through the influence it wields as a regulator and major shareholder in the country’s larger enterprises, such as Netcom.
