Stretch Inc., the pioneer and leader in software configurable processors, announced availability of its VRC6404HD, the world’s first high definition PCIe DVR add-in card.

The new card is capable of high definition capture and compression of up to four channels of high definition video at full frame rate using multiple CODEC options.

The VRC6404HD is compliant with the standards of the recently formed HDcctv Alliance, which enables transmission of uncompressed video across standard coax cabling.

The ability to reuse an existing coax-based infrastructure allows installers to easily and cost-effectively upgrade existing surveillance systems to high definition.

Stretch, a founding member of the Alliance, first demonstrated the HDcctv technology at trade shows earlier this year.

“The VRC6404HD demonstrates the power and scalability of the Stretch architecture,” said Craig Lytle, Stretch president and CEO. “This is the first offering in our line of HDcctv compliant cards and we think it will have a tremendous impact on the way the surveillance industry uses video, enabling upgrades to HD resolution using existing cabling infrastructure.”

The VRC6404HD is the latest member of Stretch’s VRC6000 Series of PCIe DVR add-in cards and is available as a fully featured reference design kit or in volume for OEMs.

The new card is fully compatible with both the Stretch DVR Software Developers Kit (SDK) and the Stretch Intelligent Encoder, allowing it to compress video in multiple standards formats, including the Stretch H.264 Scalable Video CODEC (SVC).

This eases the transition to high definition for video surveillance OEMs and system integrators, since the VRC6404HD uses the same API as VRC6000 Series standard definition cards.

The VRC6404HD also features a high definition spot monitor output using HDMI, and a four lane PCIe interface for transfer of high definition live and compressed video to the host system for display and storage.

“The transition to HDcctv will drive demand for scalable video encoding software,” commented Bob Beachler, Stretch vice president of marketing, operations, and system design. “Even with the compression efficiencies of second generation CODECs, such as H.264 AVC, high definition content consumes a large amount of storage space and may not be transmittable across legacy network connections. The Stretch H.264 SVC solution solves these difficult issues.”

The Stretch H.264 SVC CODEC enables multiple resolutions and frame rates to be encoded in a single stream.

Unique to the Stretch implementation of SVC, backward-compatible H.264 AVC streams can be extracted from the SVC encoded video for transmission across networks of any size and decoded by legacy remote devices, allowing the video to be viewed anywhere.

Additionally, higher resolution and frame rate information can be easily removed on the storage medium to reduce file sizes and free up valuable storage for re-use.