GEO Interactive Media Group Ltd. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. have co-developed the MPEG4 streaming video cell phone based on GEO’s patented Emblaze A2 video ASIC chip. Deliveries of the new Samsung Video Cell Phone are scheduled to begin first in Asia and Europe, with United States market deliveries to follow.
The new cell phone allows users to view rich media content directly on their mobile phones by pressing the video function key and browsing through the list of available content, in a similar fashion to viewing television channels.
“StarTrek style science fiction is about to become a mainstream reality for the many millions of people who are leading increasingly cellular-centric professional and personal lives,” said Sasson Darwish, president, GEO’s U.S. Operations. “While other wireless companies continue to make promises they cannot deliver on, GEO is delivering a completely integrated end-to-end solution that can stream video over today’s 2G wireless networks and tomorrow’s 2.5G and 3G wireless networks.”
“GEO has demonstrated a superb mastery of technology in delivering its Emblaze A2 video ASIC chip on time,” commented B.D. Cho, vice president of research and development at Samsung Electronics Wireless Terminals Division. “In doing so, they have enabled us to build the world’s first streaming video cell phone in the year 2000, the start of the 21st Century. We are very pleased to once again emphasize Samsung’s leadership in innovation for the benefit of its worldwide customer base.”
The Emblaze A2 video ASIC chip allows for dynamic performance based on bandwidth scalability. The phone incorporating this chip enables varying viewing experiences (video size, speed, and image quality) in accordance with the bandwidth provided by the carrier network over 2G, 2.5G and 3G technologies. As bandwidth increases, the user can enjoy a larger video size with a smoother image and better image quality. The Samsung Video Cell Phone is currently compatible with existing CDMA systems at speeds of 9.6kbps, 64kbps and CDMA2000 1X that is capable of reaching a data transfer rate of up to 144kbps.
