Fraunhofer IIS, Unified Streaming and Partners to extend HE-AAC MPEG-DASH streaming ecosystem

2013 NAB Show, USA: Fraunhofer IIS, the world’s renowned source for audio and multimedia technologies, and Unified Streaming (USP), the provider of cross-platform video-streaming technologies, have announced their partnership combining USP’s adaptive streaming expertise with Fraunhofer’s High-Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) multichannel audio codec.

This collaboration extends the ecosystem for HE-AAC MPEG-DASH streaming, enabling broadcasters and service providers to deliver the best possible MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) streaming experience for video and audio-only services.

Fraunhofer IIS and Unified Streaming collaborated on the optimization of the USP streaming tools for use with HE-AAC, today’s most efficient, flexible and high-quality multichannel and stereo audio codec. HE-AAC offers the flexibility to encode up to 48 audio channels in various configurations including mono, stereo 5.1 and 7.1 surround. Low data rates – such as 5.1 surround sound at only 64 kbit/s – allow surround sound to be streamed without the need to switch to stereo when bandwidth gets constrained.

Therefore, it can ensure a truly seamless adaptive switching experience. In audio-only services such as Internet radio, it can improve the quality of experience for listeners and enable a more efficient large-scale deployment of Internet delivered content.

HE-AAC has emerged as the global standard for broadcasting and streaming multimedia content, including Internet radio or web TV, digital radio and digital television. It is natively supported by Android Jelly Bean, iOS, Windows 7/8, Mac OS, the leading HTML5 browsers and as a result, has been deployed in over 5 billion consumer electronic devices worldwide. Therefore service providers in many cases only need to encode their content in a single audio format, HE-AAC Multichannel.