No compression seen in encoders

Encoders are on the move with the market for units expanding. In fact, the building sales of encoders predicted for 2009 is at 14 %. DIS forecasts that sales in 2010 may be slightly lower than 2009 while the next few years show modest growth for this category.

This news was reported in Encoding Systems World 2008, published by DIS Consulting Corporation.

The survey reports are based on encoder and trans-coder ownership and purchasing seen among broadcasters and AV professionals, worldwide. As such, the report would reflect at least some of the newborn hesitancy clouding 2009 purchase plans.

The data shows more than a quarter million encoder units installed, worldwide, which while impressive, is in and of itself proof that there is a good amount of unmet purchase potential to fill in the coming years.

The global survey report looked at encoder use amongst four central encoder user groups: Broadcasting, Cable/Satellite and Telco, Production/Post-Production and Institutional (comprising education, religious, governmental, medical and corporate).

Over 425 audio-video professionals responded to the survey worldwide. The survey results are also broken into findings by reported major encoder applications which included: Combined Uses (where more than one use was indicated), news, video-on-demand, IPTV, mobile, editing, play-to-air / play-out, web / internet streaming, ingest/ capture, media management / archive, sports / live events, station & facility automation and other.

Additionally, the survey made extensive inquiries into the varied technology issues and trends that are most affecting encoder specifying and usage ~ including great detail on the types of inputs and outputs and standards accommodated ~ as well as budgets and revenues of users, brand image rankings, what influences their purchases and how the software, hardware or hybridized solutions are most commonly applied.

It is difficult to say exactly why the market for encoders is seeing so much growth, compared with other product areas, except to say that the need to enable additional channel capacity and a growing variety of applications with application-specific solutions seem to be among the drivers.

Of course, it also helps that the manufacturers of corresponding technologies, such as video camcorders and video editing gear, seem bent on continually introducing more and new codec-requiring recording formats, thus virtually assuring that encoders, trans-coders and decoders will be required to make the whole workflow communicate successfully.

And, as is typical for a very active and healthy segment, the encoding market features over 40 brands, some of whoe strength spans multiple applications but many whose dominance is narrowly application-specific.

Douglas I. Sheer is CEO and chief analyst of DIS Consulting Corporation and may be reached at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .

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