KDDI to deliver 4x HD video-on-demand

Those Japs certainly have it good – KDDI has just started an online service that is capable of sending quad-HD films over a typical ADSL or fiber-optic Internet connection. In order to help it maintain a resolution four times that of standard HD, the video consumes a mere 20Mbps of bandwidth. While this development would put it out of reach of most domestic ADSL subscribers in the West, this is no problem for Japanese who currently enjoy broadband between 50Mbps and 100Mbps. This H.264-compliant method makes it possible by working out which part of an image changes the most from frame to frame, applying the most relevant compression algorithm on the spot.