Subject: german announcement

From: "Dr. Ralf Wegner" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 1996 15:05:23 -0800

Announcement: PersonalR@dio

PersonalR@dio - A sophisticated radio broadcast scheme in the World Wide Web
                (in german language)

The German News broadcaster Bavaria 5 (B 5), German research center for 
Information Technology (GMD) and two of GMD's spin Off  companies, namely 
Gesellschaft fuer Kommunikation und Kooperation (gekko) and the engineering 
office Horz & Schnepf (H&S) present a full radio broadcast scheme on the World 
Wide Web with the aid of Xing Technology products.
Although there have been some radio broadcast projects already been started on 
the Internet or Mbone, PersonalR@dio is the first of its kind in Germany, 
entailing complete news broadcasts comprising several advanced and complex on 
line tools. PersonalR@dio will start its service with the begin of the CeBit'96 
exhibition at Hannover (Germany).

Please take a look at our sites at:   http://mats.gmd.de/BR5/ 
                                            and:   http://www.br-online.de/     
 on the World Wide Web.

Facing the technological challenges of the new media age,  the news channel 'B5 
aktuell' broadcasts directly  to the Internet. The program is continuously 
updated and news will be available on the Internet, some half an hour after they 
break out !!
PersonalR@dio is based on four services/techniques:

1. live stream access - real-time audio
2. live stream splitting due to the program scheme of B 5 aktuell and 
     automatically updated archive (up to 7 days) - real-time audio
3.field of interest archives (e.g. teleteaching) - real-time audio and download 
of audio files
4. additional multimedia information

The 'B5 aktuell' signals are broadcasted from Munich via satellite (Astra-Sat) 
which are received at GMD in Sankt Augustin. The signals are further encoded and 
prepared for the Internet using Xing encoding and server techniques.
For 'live' and 'on demand' streams the signals are duplicated and processed 
automatically for complete 'B5 aktuell' broadcast scheme.
There is also an archive system with specific audio broadcasts  such as 
interviews or educational programs which may be accessed in parallel.
Although the technology of Xing provides higher bit rates for audio quality 
broadcasts, the encoded bit rates used here are mainly 11 Kbit/s. This is a 
compromise between better audio quality and reaching a larger number of end 
users ('B5 aktuell' can be accessed by down to 14400 baud modems).
The technology of Xing also allows to broadcast into the Mbone (which would be 
the state of the art for live streams). But since most of all PC are running 
Microsoft Windows (no Mbone support by the current Winsock implementation) most 
users would not receive the signal. This is why PersonalR@dio broadcasts up to 
now exclusively into the Internet.

-- 
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Dr. Ralf Wegner
                        GMD
National Research Center for Information Technology
         Institute for Media Communication
    Multimedia Applications in Telecooperation

GMD.IMK (MAT)                http://mats.gmd.de/ralf
Schloss Birlinghoven          Tel: +49 2241 14-2106
Postfach 13 16                Fax: +49 2241 14-2449
D-53731 Sankt Augustin      EMail: [email-masked]
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