OREANDA-NEWS. NTT DOCOMO, INC. announced that it will license a software for decoding HEVC, the new international standard for video coding, in March. DOCOMO’s HEVC decoding software is the world’s first of its kind for Full HD playback on smartphones.

HEVC was jointly finalized by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as ISO/IEC 23008-2 and the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) as H.265 on January 25. It is the next-generation standard succeeding H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, the current format used widely in audio and visual equipment and mobile devices.

Compared with MPEG-4 AVC, compressed video can be downloaded twice as fast, or higher-quality video can be streamed at conventional speeds. DOCOMO’s HEVC decoding software allows smooth playback of Full HD on smartphones without delays or interruptions. Furthermore, for playback on personal computers the software enables real-time decoding of 4K UHDTV, which offer four times the resolution of Full HD.

DOCOMO will license its new decoding software to facilitate the development and widespread adoption of HEVC in many fields, including mobile video services. DOCOMO itself will use HEVC to broadly reduce communication network load and offer higher-quality mobile video services for smartphones and tablets.