iPhones in the stream

Technology developed by a Melbourne software maker will soon be streaming live video to Australian mobile phone subscribers.

MComms TV director Grant Simonds said its Transcode software, deployed with Telstra and mobile operators in Austria and Macau, converts video streams in real-time into a mobile phone-friendly format that requires no special software on the handset to view.

The software converts many input video types into a wide variety of formats used by digital devices, he said.

MComms TV has distribution agreements with Ericsson Australia, Alcatel and other providers but "in many cases we are selling directly to mobile network operators and content providers worldwide", Simonds said.

The software transcodes video to 3G mobile phone video players - including those running Apple's OS 3.0 released last week - that support modern video compression standards such as H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding) and H.263, he said.

Such compression schemes or codecs will play on PCs running Windows Media Player and games consoles such as the PlayStation 3.

"MComms Transcode supports live real-time transcoding, such as taking a satellite or camera feed and streaming it live to iPhone continuously," Simonds said. "We will shortly release a version for batch transcoding of files for iPhone and other 3G phones."

The developer is talking to makers of devices and software to embed its transcoding software in other products, he said. The software is licenced but could be provided as a "cloud" service by MComms TV partners, he said.