More on MPEG4

ratajik writes: "Salon is running a story about how MPEG-LA (the alliance of companies in charge of licensing MPEG4) are planning on charging .25 cents for each copy they sell, and a .02 cent an hour "use fee" for anyone viewing MPEG4. They have a interesting slant on how this will make open-source alternatives much more attractive, and will likely kill off use of the MPEG4 standard in the long run."

Comments

Re:I hope MPEG-4 fails

[benwaggoner]

I'm the Ben Waggoner who was quoted in the article.

Actually, I wasn't saying it was TOO complex. While the entire standard certainly is complex, particular implementations only use a subset of those, based on a combination of Profiles and Levels.

The stuff most folks have been talking about, like the Simple Visual and Advanced Simple Visual used in the forthcoming QuickTime 6 and DivX 5.0 are only a really, really small part of the standard.

MPEG-4 is a big toolbox of features that can be used to build many different solutions, potentially competing or enhancing things like Flash, Shockwave, JPEG, streaming servers, movie projectors, video cameras, etcetera.

I view this as a real strength. Going forward anyone who needs to develop a new media tool can start with MPEG-4, instead of starting with scratch.

A good analogy would be how GNU and Linux are now a default port to all kinds of new and strange devices and tasks, because the building blocks are all there.

It's important that the open source community understand that building a real competitior to MPEG-4 is a task on the order of magnitude of building an OS from scratch.

Just being able to play a rectangular movie with audio isn't even scratching the surface.