Trader Peter Tuchman, center, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. Stocks are opening higher on Wall Street ahead of what is expected to be more upbeat data on housing from the government. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
UN group OKs new video format to save bandwidth
Published: 01:44:30 PM, Sat 26 January 2013 UTC
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N. telecommunications agency says its members have agreed upon a new compression format that could dramatically cut the amount of Internet bandwidth currently used by video files.
The International Telecommunication Union says the format, or codec, known as H.265 would require just half the amount of data needed by its predecessor, H.264.
The Geneva-based agency says videos encoded using the H.264 format — which is favored by devices such as Apple's iPad — currently account for two-fifths of web traffic.
ITU said in a statement late Friday the new H.265 codec could pave the way for "the next wave of innovation," such as faster movie downloads and higher-quality video streaming.
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