Hikvision No on H.265 But Pro On H.265+

By Brian Karas, Published Jan 02, 2017, 11:28am EST (Info+)

Hikvision said H.265 was a 'solution in search of a problem' a half year ago but now they are getting bullish, embracing H.265+.

In this report, we examine Hikvision's new position on H.265, and the likelihood that the company can change the slow adoption of H.265 with support behind it.

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Comments (16)

Undisclosed #1

01/02/17 04:48pm

Will Hik's VMS support their own new H.265+?

If so, maybe this is simply a Hik VMS adoption scheme...

Now that they have significant numbers of integrators using their cameras, somehow getting them to also use the Hik VMS in order to 'get the benefits' of H.265+ seems like a logical next step.

It might also explain the fact that they do not mention their own H.264+...

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Undisclosed Integrator #2

In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 01/02/17 09:07pm

I agree that it smells like a push to their system that would become increasingly closed.  In all likelihood their VMS supports it and no doubt their new NVRs would have custom chips put in for decoding.  H.265 is starting to look like a chance to push for proprietary compression schemes.  If you don't want smart codecs - fine - but if you do, buy our product end to end.

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John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 01/02/17 09:29pm

maybe this is simply a Hik VMS adoption scheme

I see no reason why Hikvision would restrict H.265+ to Hikvision VMSes. I have no information one way or the other but I am basing this on Hikvision's historical actions and the actions of other smart codecs which have consistently been open.

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Undisclosed #1

In reply to John Honovich | 01/03/17 02:07am

An adoption scheme does not have to restrict anything.

"H.265+ inherits the primary weaknesses of H.265: lack of VMS support.."

Hik is 'jumping over' H.265 (which hardly any of the larger players are even supporting at this point) and releasing their own H.265+ 'smart' version.

Thereby giving them a compelling (maybe only in their own minds) talking point with which to convince someone to use their VMS.

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Undisclosed #3

IPVMU Certified | In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 01/03/17 02:12am

Hik is 'jumping over' H.265 (which hardly any of the larger players are even supporting at this point) and releasing their own H.265+ 'smart' version.

To be sure, H.265+ (similar to h.264+) from the client perspective, is just H.265.  

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Undisclosed #1

In reply to Undisclosed #3 | 01/03/17 02:39am

Not sure I get your point.  The client software itself?

My argument is simple:

1.  Hikvision cameras have exploded in popularity

2.  Hikvision VMS software does not share this same (recent) historical trajectory

3.  Hikvision wants to change this (#2, not #1)

4.  Hikvision skips 'regular' H.265 and releases their smart version before most other companies have even implemented the regular stuff

5.  Hikvision thinks this (the even greater bandwidth/storage savings) will be a compelling reason to use their VMS

6.

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Undisclosed #3

IPVMU Certified | In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 01/03/17 02:56am

Hikvision skips 'regular' H.265 and releases their smart version before most other companies have even implemented the regular stuff.

How did they skip h.265?  I assume you mean thru u.s. Channel distribution, because I bought a Hikvision h.265 camera almost a year ago.  At $85 for 4mp ip66 IR dome, I'm thinking a few others did as well.

What do you mean by most other manufacturers haven't implemented the regular stuff?

Hik, Dahua, Samsung, Uniview, Panasonic, Vivotek collectively are a good part of the market, no? 

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Undisclosed #1

In reply to Undisclosed #3 | 01/03/17 03:44am

"How did they skip h.265?  I assume you mean thru u.s. Channel distribution"

yes

"What do you mean by most other manufacturers haven't implemented the regular stuff?

Hik, Dahua, Samsung, Uniview, Panasonic, Vivotek collectively are a good part of the market, no? "

If there were only 11 VMS's out there, then the 6 you listed would make my statement inaccurate - but there are many more than that (at least available in N America).  And most still have not implemented H.265 - yet.

While I do not disagree that those 6 companies are a 'good part of the market', I don't see any of those companies as any kind of real players in the N American VMS market.  Maybe Panasonic since they bought Video Insight.

Who are the big VMS players in your market?  and what market is that?

Thanks  :)

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Undisclosed #3

IPVMU Certified | In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 01/03/17 04:32am

Who are the big VMS players in your market, and what market is that?

The two biggest, I believe are Milestone and Genetec, in the U.S.  They have both implemented h.265 to a degree at least.

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Undisclosed #1

In reply to Undisclosed #3 | 01/03/17 04:55am

yup.... both within the last 3-4 months.

do they both encode in H.265?

or have they both merely added support for cameras that do?

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Undisclosed #3

IPVMU Certified | In reply to Undisclosed #1 | 01/03/17 07:25am

do they both encode in H.265?

They seem to prefer decoding if they have to do anything with the stream besides write it to the disk and roll it over, e.g. display it, detect motion...

But maybe for transcoding? 

That brings up an interesting point.

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Ricardo Souza

Motorola Solutions
IPVMU Certified | 01/02/17 10:49pm

It seems that they are investing a lot of R&D in multiple areas and bringing innovation to the table. Analytics and compression for example. 

All those loans are really paying off. Seems to me that they want to be king of the hill.

I wouldn't be surprised if during this year they start to make company acquisitions towards analytics and compression.

It is very good to have companies that want to be leader and starts to invest in stuff way ahead then others.

I wonder if that's going to be one of their core values or if it is just to beat the competition.

This year surely is going to be fun!

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John Honovich

IPVM | In reply to Ricardo Souza | 01/02/17 11:39pm

It seems that they are investing a lot of R&D in multiple areas and bringing innovation to the table.

Many manufacturers have smart codecs. For example, Hanwha already has smart H.265+ released while Hikvision is just talking about it.

I am pretty sure most of it, for all manufacturers, is coming from the SoC / encoder chip manufacturers.

As for analytics, what high end analytics is Hikvision shipping outside of China? We'd be curious to test if there was something new / novel, especially if it is for their deep learning claims.

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Undisclosed Manufacturer #4

In reply to John Honovich | 01/09/17 04:47pm

" Many manufacturers have smart codecs. For example, Hanwha already has smart H.265+ released while Hikvision is just talking about it.

I am pretty sure most of it, for all manufacturers, is coming from the SoC / encoder chip manufacturers. "

That's pretty accurate. Almost everyone will have access to smart codecs supporting H.265+ or whatever they will call it. It will be interesting to find out if Hik will add any 'special sauce' to theirs to improve performance. Awaiting IPVM shootout.

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Undisclosed #3

IPVMU Certified | 01/03/17 01:53am

...as it exists right now, for industrial and surveillance applications, H.265’s compression capabilities may not reach the 100% improvement as claimed over H.264 in an actual application scenario."  - Hikvision Bets Against H.265

I guess they were right after all, h.265 couldn't reach the "100% improvement" over h.264.

It only reached 96%

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John Honovich

IPVM | 01/05/17 10:10am

Update: new Hikvision press release for Intersec Dubai show with some more details:

H.265+ smart codec is planned to be applied to all Hikvision products in the future, while at INTERSEC Dubai, this technology will first be available in Hikvision Easy IP series, EXIR series, and Hikvision DarkFighter series etc.

Not clear when in the 'future' this will be. If consistent with Hikvision's track record of pre-announcing products, and delays in products being released in North America, it might be 2018 before they are showing across the world.

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