Truth be known, there aren’t too many technological constants. Passing electricity through a wire to make it bright, using flammable liquid to push pistons, and pixels. But while great strides have been made to improve each, underneath they haven’t changed. Researches at Bath University, Root6 Technology, Smoke & Mirror and Ovation Data Services have launched a new video codec that could finally put the old pixel to bed. In fact, those behind the research predict the death of the pixel within the next five years.

Whereas digital images today consist of millions of individual coloured cells or ‘pixels’ – requiring huge amounts of data to store, and an image technology where any scaling dramatically hinders the quality of Pixels. Lots of them.the picture - the proposed new codec (a computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital video stream) is entirely vector-based. Whereas vector graphics have been prolific in the still image world, technical constraints have meant a vector-based solution to moving images have not yet seen the light of day. That is, until now.

The new, highly-sophisticated codec developed primarily at the University of Bath finds a solution to create and fill in between the contours of the vectors on display, resulting in a picture independent of resolution and one with more graphical punch pumped into every single byte.

All that’s left to do is to get companies involved and backing the new work. Death to the pixel? It’s had a good life.

Harvey McDaniel

Source: The University Of Bath