[CeBIT 2013] I saw a great number of technology demos at CeBIT, and the Fraunhofer booth is always a good place to find interesting demos that provide a good insight of what is really going on inside our most beloved gadgets.
At CeBIT this year, Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuit (IIS) was showcasing multichannel audio streamed through an Android smartphone and displayed on a large screen TV connected to the phone via a HDMI cable. The demo showed video and audio streaming at various bit-rates (see the numbers at the bottom of the TV display in the video). The result was pretty amazing, the sound was really immersive.
For instance HE-AAC is a standard for audio codec and Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuit (IIS) has developed one of its implementation which is used in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.
According to the scientific institute, HE-AAC is the most efficient audio codec available for TV broadcasting, because, compared to other codecs, it requires considerably lower bit-rates to deliver the same audio quality. HE-AAC delivers high quality audio at bit-rates as low as 32 to 48 kbit/s.
For example, a 5.1 surround and stereo simulcast with HE-AAC uses less bandwith than a single 5.1 surround signal based on any other broadcast codec. The HE-AAC codec supports any channel configuration from mono to up to 48 channels, and includes stereo as well as 5.1 surrounds.
HE-AAC is now the predominant codec used in most high end broadcast and streaming systems, which is why numerous consumer electronics such as TV receiver devices, smartphones and PCs come with HE-AA support.
HE-AAC is also the mandatory codec for DASH 264, the MPEG DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) interoperability specification that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers. More specifically it allows various devices receiving content streamed over the internet to adapt to variable Internet receiving conditions