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 can't beleive....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, these people are being bought off by companies such as Real and Microsoft to wreck the MPEG4 standard and protect proprietary standards. They are ruining MP4 intentionally.

Re:Who is buying this?

[2nd Post!]

What is on a DVD except a software copy of the original?

You mean you would prefer to pay $29 for 2 pieces of aluminum and acrylic, some polyester-acrylic pigments, a few sheets of coated paper, and a polyvinyl plastic case?

DVDs are a convenient storage mechanism.
Anyway, good luck with finding free 'throw away' stuff. I own stuff worth paying for, myself :)

Re:And how are they supposed to measure this?

[Kymermosst]

Ahh, BUT the car's gas mileage is BETTER on freeways than it is on city streets, and in fact, when idling in a traffic jam because the state did not keep their end of the bargain uses a LOT less gas.

Gas tax is more associated with "mileage" as opposed to "time." It even works out with your math, "you use a certain amount of gas per hour, and the size of the vehicle (roughly) determines how much gas you burn", making it fair for larger vehicles which use more gas putting their extra weight per mile.

If they charged for "time", then it would cost loads more. I am okay with paying for actual use, which is mileage driven on the surface of the road, which is covered by the gas tax. If my car is stopped, either by me, or by the fault of the state not adequately designing the road, there is no way I should have to pay it.

I can also support normal mileage-based toll roads for the same way... they are charging for miles driven on the road, not time spent.

Just imagine if they checked the time your car entered the freeway, and then when you got off, two hours later, they charged you for two hours of road use. Sounds okay? Okay, what if that trip, at legal speeds, only should have taken 30 minutes, but the freeway was backed up due to an accident or something?

I bet you'd be so friggin pissed off.

Now, how that relates to the article is, if they charged you for "viewing time", and you say... took a piss during the MPEG-4 movie you were watching, do they refund you? Or do they charge? What if you fall asleep? How do they measure whether you were actually *viewing*?

Re:Reactions from Xiph

[2nd Post!]

Hmmm, well, now I gotta wonder; what is he going to use to play/encode oggs on his G4?

Or is it gonna be a Linux cube, and does he plan to do all his ripping and encoding and playback on a PC?

I own a Mac, and haven't found much info. An iTunes plugin would be wonderful, or a small standalone player ala mpg123... iTunes ripping, using AppleScripts and oggenc, similar to the LAME encoder, would be awesome too, but as of 3 weeks ago, I couldn't get oggenc to compile under OS X :(

Pay-per-view, pay-per-use, micropayments, etc.

[Shiny Metal S.]

Buncha bullcrap. I'm tired of this crap that tries to wring money out of you for time spent doing something. Subscription software, pay-per-minute viewing/listening, and the like.

This pay-per-view crap won't work, for the same reason as other micropayment ideas. See The Case Against Micropayments, my emphasis:

(...)

Micropayment systems have not failed because of poor implementation; they have failed because they are a bad idea. Furthermore, since their weakness is systemic, they will continue to fail in the future.

Proponents of micropayments often argue that the real world demonstrates user acceptance: Micropayments are used in a number of household utilities such as electricity, gas, and most germanely telecom services like long distance.

These arguments run aground on the historical record. There have been a number of attempts to implement micropayments, and they have not caught on in even in a modest fashion - a partial list of floundering or failed systems includes FirstVirtual, Cybercoin, Millicent, Digicash, Internet Dollar, Pay2See, MicroMint and Cybercent. If there was going to be broad user support, we would have seen some glimmer of it by now.

Furthermore, businesses like the gas company and the phone company that use micropayments offline share one characteristic: They are all monopolies or cartels. In situations where there is real competition, providers are usually forced to drop "pay as you go" schemes in response to user preference, because if they don't, anyone who can offer flat-rate pricing becomes the market leader. (See sidebar: "Simplicity in pricing.")

Why have micropayments failed? There's a short answer and a long one. The short answer captures micropayment's fatal weakness; the long one just provides additional detail.

The Short Answer for Why Micropayments Fail

Users hate them.

(...)

Read the rest of this article, very good stuff. I won't ever use pay-per-view and any other micropayments. For the same reason as I prefer a flat fee for my DSL instead of pay-per-use fee for every email I send or every website I visit, etc.

Yes, right.

[WhiteKnight07]

Or would you prefer EVERYTHING be rendered on the fly?

In the case of games, in a word, yes. Given the capablilities of the GeForce3 and GeForce4 Ti series and the Radeon 8500 with regards to DirectX 8.1 it shouldn't be that hard to do. Hell even a GeForce2 is overkill for the vast majority of todays games anyway. If you're looking for a good video codec then look no further than XviD or in the future, Tarkin. (Or DivX 3.11 if your into super awsome but illegal codecs.)

MPEG4 is essientally a super snazy version of flash for high quality video. Think about it. It is trying to make many different types of interactive media available on a wide range of platforms simultaneously. It's an attampt to make a single proprietary format that does everything. This is exactly what flash does/is trying to do. True, MPEG4 actually has uses beyond annoying banner ads but it is essentialy the same sort of idea. Just as flash can be surpassed by XML/CSS/DHTML so MPEG4 can be surpassed by XviD/Tarkin and OGG. The reason is because these alternatives fufill the primary purpose of flash and MPEG4, interactive web content and video/audio compression respectively while being free, open, stable, and universal. Yes the flash/MPEG4 paradigm provides cleaner intigration and a nicer package from a development standpoint but when lisenceing costs are factored in the open alternatives win hands down.

Apple in prime position now?

[squant0]

Couldn't Apple just change the codec for the new quicktime and pretty much set the standard? Since most of Real's codecs are moving toward open standards, and MS probably will go with something similar to the MPEG-LA standard, so "we" would be still in the same place. One standard for quicktime (which I would like to see on Linux), one for Real, and some stupid codec for M$. In the long run, something free, like the mp3 codec will win out, I am not going to pay fees. Squanto

Having Flashbacks of GIF

[ebresie]

Isn't this the whole thing that happen with the GIF format...someone started trying to make money off of it and then people started using jpeg, png,etc to overcome it.

Oh well, I guess in the end, they have to make money, but shouldn't it be up to the makers that implement the cost concerns and not the patent holders?

ISMA

[deblau]

[disclaimer] I am one of a group who represent the Inktomi membership in the ISMA. [/disclaimer]

The article quotes Tom Jacobs on the official ISMA position on the matter, and I can vouch for that position personally. I was at our last meeting in NYC on Feb 4 when he first stated it. I can clarify a few points:

1. First, that we are unhappy with the MPEG-LA licensing terms, but we are actively pursuing discussion of those terms with them.
2. ISMA's stated charter is interoperability of rich streaming media over IP networks. It is explicitly stated that we want player-neutral protocols. If MPEG-4 licensing makes it non-player-neutral, well... draw your own conclusions.
3. We are considering many protocol options. ISMA is composed of two arms, technical and marketing. The tech guys (myself included) are all over using open-source. What remains to be seen is whether or not those solutions can provide the features that our marketing and retail appliance partners are demanding. (Hint to Ogg Tarkin guys: this is your cue to get motivated.)

Furthermore, let's get something straight about MPEG-LA. (N.B. This information comes straight from a presentation Larry Horn gave at the ISMA meeting.)

MPEG-LA is composed of those companies or entities who have critical IP in MPEG-4 video and systems technologies. Two points:

• Critical IP. This means MPEG-4 can't be implemented without trampling on these guys' patents. Implementation-specific IP (i.e. a particular vendor's patented player) doesn't cut it.
• Video and systems. This doesn't cover audio. Yes, it's stupid, but that's the way it is. (Systems, btw, is all that feature-rich stuff beyond video and audio, like embedded scrolling text, etc etc)

If anyone anywhere wants to implement MPEG-4 video, they're gonna have to talk to MPEG-LA. Go ask the Quicktime guys. Notice how they released the streaming server but not the encoder/decoder retail products? Same goes for open-source implementations of MPEG-4, which, in my opinion, are gonna suffer because people don't wanna pay anything for what should be free encoders/decoders. Yes, the licensing is $0.50 ($0.25 for both encoder and decoder), which is not much, but I don't think people will accept that.

ISMA is in charge of the de-facto standard for streaming media online. It'd be cool if we used open-source, but we have to go with what we can get that meets our requirements. The ball is in your court, Xiph. If you wanna make a name for yourselves, this is the break you've been waiting for.