Abstract

The greatest advantage of AVS when compared to international standards such as MPEG is its lower royalties. MPEG standards not only charge hardware vendors for licensing but also levy membership dues on service providers based on programming and subscriber numbers. Beyond its pricing advantage however, there is still room for improvement in AVS technology and maturity. Currently, only a few chip and terminal device makers are involved with AVS, with a very limited number of products actually available at the end 2007. These factors have directly impacted service providers' willingness to adopt it on a large scale in their commercial networks. Apart from the immaturity of AVS technology and products, fixed-line telecoms such as China Telecom and China Netcom have already adopted the H.264 standard for their IPTV networks in many Chinese cities. Although IPTV is a key AVS application, these operators are not likely to replace their H.264 hardware with AVS infrastructure without good reason to protect their investments and ensure stability.

In the future, audio-video content will soon see widespread use in many applications so will offer AVS a golden opportunity to become the preferred codec. The authors and industry chain participants are expected to work together to improve their technology and put the products into large scale production in order to be competitive with other international standards.

Appendix

Scope

This research report looked at the Chinese AVS audio video standard and provides an overview of its development. It then analyzes its differences with existing international standards followed by an assessment of its influence and future prospects.