DVI Technology

DVI technology is different from the other standards discussed here because it is specifically based on the use of special hardware. Intel Corporation and IBM Corporation have developed a programmable chipset, which implements the technology in a co-processor environment on any type of computer platform. These chips support a wide range of multimedia functions in software, including JPEG compression and several DVI-unique compression algorithms for stills or motion video. Because of the programmability of the chipset, it can respond to new algorithm developments-for example, the programming of the chips to do MPEG processing is being explored. Intel is committed to producing higher-speed DVI processors in the future and has even discussed the possible integration of DVI functionality with a future generation of the x86 CPU family. Thus, the DVI hardware is an important engine for present and future compression developments.
DVI Technology Motion Video Compression
DVI Technology can do both symmetric and asymmetric motion video compression/decompression. The asymmetric approach is called Production-Level Video (PLV). Video for PLV must be sent to a central compression facility, which uses large computers and special interface equipment, but any DVI system is capable of playing back the resulting compressed video. The picture quality of PLV is the highest that can currently be achieved. The other DVI compression approach is Real Time Video (RTV). It is done on any DVI system that has the Action Media Capture Board installed. Playback of RTV is on the same system or any other DVI system. Because RTV is a symmetric approach, which requires that compression be done with only the computing power available in a DVI system, RTV picture quality is not as good as PLV picture quality.
DVI Production-Level Compression
PLV is an interframe compression technique; the algorithm details are proprietary, and we can only say that it is block-oriented and that it involves multiple compression techniques. Since it was designed specifically for the DVI chipset, it is optimised for that environment, and it probably would not make much sense to run it on different hardware.
PLV is an interframe compression technique; the algorithm details are proprietary, and we can only say that it is block-oriented and that it involves multiple compression techniques. Since it was designed specifically for the DVI chipset, it is optimised for that environment, and it probably would not make much sense to run it on different hardware.
PLV compression is an asymmetric approach where a large computer does the compression and the DVI hardware in the PC does the decompression. It takes a facility costing several hundred thousand dollars to perform PLV compression at reasonable speeds. Since this cost is too much for a single application developer to bear, centralised facilities are provided where developers can send their video to be compressed for a fee. We will discuss what such facilities involve and how they are made available to developers.