Ittiam offers next generation IP video phones

A second internet age is coming after the false start that led to the tech bubble bursting in 2000 and Bangalore based Ittiam Systems is at the global forefront with its solution for what it calls the next generation internet protocol video phone (IPVP).

Just as now you can make a phone call over the internet courtesy VOIP technology, "Ittima's solution makes it possible to deliver quality video conferencing capability for personal use at home and office "� standalone or otherwise," says Srini Rajam, chairman and CEO of Ittiam.

Globally the solution has been available from the first quarter of this year at a cost of around $ 200-300 per unit and can be used through a broadband connection of 512 kbps. It is only conference rooms of corporations which till now have this facility with a unit costing around $5,000, Rajam added.

The product stands at the intersection of multimedia and broadband. It is essentially using an IP protocol to stream media content. In the future this will enable commercial airplanes to offer passengers on demand movie, games, music and satellite TV of their choice through media streaming technology.

Ittiam's IP video phone solution has already been licensed to several OEMs and ODMs for standalone as well as embedded applications for IP settop boxes. The fact that it can be integrated with a settop box makes it possible to download not just from the net but TV channels.

Ittiam calls it a "next generation" product solution because last year the company launched its first IPVP solution. In the present offering the phone has moved from MPEG4 technology to H.264, which is a sophisticated version of the former. The latter is very scaleable, usable on mobile device as well as HDTV, and can give same video quality as MPEG4 at one-fourth the bandwidth. So when used for IPVP, the technology can give four times better picture quality as MPEG4 by using same bandwidth.

The catch is it is very computing intensive. You can't simply implement it on a regular DSP (digital signal processor). "The challenge was to get H.264 compression and decompression on a commercial DSP which is not very costly; this is what taxed us the most and to do this we have filed for four patents," says Sattam Dasgupta, vice president for media streaming.

The latest offering enables not just peer to peer video communication but three-way conferencing. "This really sets us apart; nobody else in the world does this, with natural video quality," adds Dasgupta.

Ittiam, which was started in 2000 by a set of engineers from Texas Instruments and is led by former TI managing director Rajam, posted a turnover of $ 4.8 million and a net profit of $1 million in 2004-05. Early this year it secured a second round of funding of $ 6.5 million from Bank of America, thus taking total funding to $11.5 million.

Customer wins have gone up by 50 per cent in the current year, compared to 2004-05 and this will get reflected in revenues next year, that is 2006-07. At the current going, the company should be ready to go public in 2008-09.

The launch of the new product comes in the wake of a sharp upscaling of Ittiam's headcount, from 100 to 170. To make the latest product possible, Ittiam has started a media streaming business unit, headed by Dasgupta.