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

Who is buying this?

[catwh0re]

I don't know about you, but everything that I find to be popular is popular because it is either free, or easy to pirate (free). I'd rather buy a DVD than pay for some software copy of it.

Re:Who is buying this?

[Bi()hazard]

One would wonder what the MPEG-4 people are thinking. This plan will obviously fail; how could high powered executives be so foolish? Have they been blinded by greed? Are they really that arrogant?

The answer is no. They are foolish like foxen: (a la boxen, if you people can use boxen as the plural of box then more than one fox is foxen, more than one sex is sexen, and a boxed set of lexx episodes is lexxen. Also, multiples of the often symbolic letter x are xen, which is pronounced like zen. Triple x-that is xxx-is therefore zen. Intriguing.) by coming out with outrageous terms now they hope to shock the market and take a highball negotiating position. MPEG-4 has enough support and technology to be the default choice. If they choose to compromise-sacrificing the time fees in exchange for acceptance of more legitimate fees, they win the negotiation now and prepare the playing field for future outrages. This ploy will be likely to work every time if it works once. Furthermore, smaller, more premium services will have greater freedom to choose per use and per hour fees if the big players take them seriously. The executives on MPEG-4 are not impartial: they serve other corporate masters. They are acting in the interests of their respective companies. They know MPEG-4 will become dominant after a negotiating process, so they feel secure in manipulating the situation to allow their own companies to bring up similar licensing terms and be taken seriously.

Do not underestimate the corporate elite. They gained their positions through long careers of stiff competition, rampant deception and hidden agendae, and ubiquitous backstabbing. These are masters of bs, people far more comfortable telling carefully crafted lies than the truth. They want to be underestimated. They want to provoke you. They are trolling to destabilize the market and create an opportunity to shift norms in their favor. And as long as the majority continues to use their products in the end, they will be successful.

And how are they supposed to measure this?

[Kymermosst]

How the hell are they going to measure "viewing time"? What if I sneeze and briefly aren't looking at the video, do they charge me for that?

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.

What next, the state is going to charge me for every minute I'm on the freeway?

I've got an idea. Let's make a computer that charges me $.02/minute for as long as I'm sitting in front of it.

I just wish more people would get sick of this crap, and write their congressman as I have done. There are too many idiots out there who just miss everything as it goes on by.

I bet they care when they get thier first bill for per-minute charges of movie viewing. By then, it'll be too late.

Re:And how are they supposed to measure this?

[mcrbids]

What next, the state is going to charge me for every minute I'm on the freeway?

They already do. It's called "Gas tax" and is applied in most jurisdictions. Since you use a certain amount of gas per hour, and the size of the vehicle (roughly) determines how much gas you burn, you, in essence, pay a "pound per mile" price for driving down the highway.

Here in California, where gas prices are around $1.25 per gallon, over 1/2 of that cost is in the form of various taxes and fees.

I understand that ratio is considerably higher still in Europe.

Re:And how are they supposed to measure this?

[psavo]

Better still. At least in Finland we have this thing called 'tv-license'. If you don't own one, you're not (legally) allowed to listen to the radio or watch TV (in your own appartment, casual hearing is *OK*).
This license is pretty hefty, but it funds 'state's tv station', which shows some very good programs, so I'm personally OK with that.
Of course we have ad-funded (did I mention that states tv-channel doesn't have ads?) channels too.

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*?

Reactions from Xiph

[tangent3]

Aren't these people cute? This is the log from yesterday's irc chat when they were discussing the article, irc.openprojects.net #vorbis

[14:05:00] {Paradox} jesus
[14:06:23] {Paradox} Hey, kids
[14:07:33] {slothy} hey para
[14:07:45] {Paradox} You want to see something that rocks?
[14:07:50] {slothy} absolutely
[14:07:52] {Paradox} http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/03/06/mpeg/ index.html
[14:09:10] {slothy} oh wow, this is great
[14:09:27] {Paradox} Jesus Christ, I nailed that one.
[14:10:17] {Paradox} I even got the last word in on the article.
[14:11:13] {Paradox} This is exactly the article I wanted to see written.
[14:17:58] {nemo} Paradox: the article seems to imply/assume that the other codecs, even if they gain popular usage, will still be technically inferior to mpeg4 though.
[14:18:16] {nemo} not the point of hte article, I know... but still vaguelly taints an otherwise great article
[14:19:58] {Paradox} I like the article a lot
[14:21:25] {nemo} I agree. it's very good
[14:22:16] {Paradox} It gets the right message out
[14:22:31] {Paradox} He didn't quote what I wanted him to quote, but I gave him plenty of stuff
[14:23:24] {nemo} *nods* it's a good article. need more like it :)
[14:26:37] {Paradox} At least it gets Xiph's name out there in the news
[14:27:14] {xiphmont} yes
[14:27:19] {xiphmont} agreed, a good article.
[14:28:20] {aaronl} wow, they used ogg in Serious Sam?
[14:32:28] {vsync} i ripped a CD to .ogg last night
[14:32:40] {vsync} first time in quite a while
[14:32:52] {pladask} aaronl: what? where did you hear that? :-)
[14:33:14] {vsync} Paradox: you've inspired confidence in me :)
[14:33:53] {Paradox} Good!
[14:34:03] {Paradox} Confidence in me, or confidence in you?
[14:34:15] {vsync} but this all means nothing until i _can_ actually play my files :)
[14:34:26] {vsync} Paradox: in you guys
[14:35:14] {Paradox} That's good to hear
[14:36:03] {Paradox} Wow, Cube coming tomorrow, my office is clean, and a good Salon article. I'll sleep well tonight.
[14:37:22] {jack} heh
[14:39:53] {Paradox} I have a hair appointment tomorrow
[14:40:07] {Paradox} at 1:45 EST
[14:40:20] {Paradox} I don't want to go, it'll keep me apart from my new toy
[14:40:34] {vsync} i wish i was a CEO of something and could have "hair appointments" and get interviewed
[14:40:37] {vsync} and have an "office"
[14:40:44] {Paradox} hah
[14:40:53] {vsync} Paradox: you guys should hire me
[14:40:56] {Paradox} My office is the extra bedroom in my apartment
[14:41:06] {vsync} to write propaganda
[14:41:09] {volsung} vsync: You just want the G4 cube... :)
[14:41:11] {vsync} spread FUD on /. for you
[14:41:11] {vsync} etc
[14:41:15] {Paradox} Tell you what.. I'll give you half of my paycheck from Xiph.org this week
[14:41:16] * Coderjoe pukes

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 :(

What the hell are they thinking?

[x136]

This won't fly. No one will buy into it. Hell, Apple has already said that they won't release Quicktime 6 until the per use fees go away. I seriously doubt Apple will be the only one to puke on the fees.

I hope MPEG-4 fails

[markj02]

I agree with Ben Waggoner: MPEG-4 was designed by a large committee of industry experts and open source codecs don't have a prayer of reaching the complexity of MPEG-4. And you know what? That's a good thing.

MPEG-4 is a complete mess. It tries to be the next generation MPEG-2, flash, speech synthesis, content management, and a lot more things all rolled into one. And MPEG-4 tries to serve too many masters: software encoders and decoders, consumer electronics devices, industrial applications, multimedia databases, and others. If MPEG-LA prices MPEG-4 out of the market, we can all sigh a collective sigh of relief because the MPEG-4 standard just sucks. MPEG-4 would be a bad idea even if there were no licensing fees.

What we need is a simple, scalable video codec. It does not have to have any bells and whistles. All it needs to do is represent a video stream and a collection of audio streams together. It should get rid of the interlacing mess from MPEG-2, it should allow for video of different sizes, and maybe it should allow for the inclusion of user-defined synchronized byte streams, and that's about it.

Open source video codec developers do not have to worry about low-level hardware implementability (that only matters for cut-throat pricing on devices you don't really want to use anyway; anything else can get a general-purpose processor), they don't have to worry about making DVD manufacturers happy, and they don't need to squeeze the last 50% of compression out of their format (machines and disks are cheap). There are now plenty of well-documented research techniques for audio and video compression, some even with open source implementation, that open source developers can use.

So, no, nobody would be able to compete with MPEG-4. But what open source video codecs can deliver is a simple, reasonably efficient, scalable, easily implementable video codec. And that's a lot better than MPEG-4.

Re:I hope MPEG-4 fails

[t]

As someone who works with JPEG 2000 I have to call you on your misinformation. JPEG 2000 uses wavelets. Most all image codecs to date use some kind of DCT. The software implementations for the wavelet engines is not optimized, as would be expected for a pre-standard implementation meant to show functionality.

And also, JPEG 2000 is not a mammoth unusable standard. I've actually read the entire standard (the non-optional parts). It is small enough that a mere human can read it in a reasonable timeframe.

Also, what software were you talking about that is 4 times slower? The JPEG2000 VM? Jasper?

t.

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.

Re:in the long run?

[tangent3]

It looks like Divx5 is released, and DivXnetworks are resorting to implanting spyware (or charging $30 for the pro version) to offset the licensing costs. This might have some effect on the XviD (open sourced derivative of DivX) though, but looks like it will go the same way as the LAME MP3 encoder, as discussed in this thread

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.

Furthermore

[Adrian Lopez]

If software manufacturers resort to metering use of MPEG4 codecs as a way to calculate license fees, monitoring viewing habits as an "unaviodable" side-effect is just a small step away.

Yet Another Useless Initiative

[duvel2]

You'd think corporations would have learned some lessons by now.

Lessons like:

There is not one example where micropayments created a profit

People aren't gonna start paying for something that they can have for free and that they always used to have for free

You can't possibly expect that your product will be The Final® and that nobody will ever come up with an even better solution way before you've recouped your investments.

Until companies learn this, there will always be some initiative to try and make money of things that will never be profitable. We've seen this with JPG, where as a result a lot of websites are switching to PGN, and now we will see this again with MPEG4.

Face the facts: things need to be scarce in order to make money of them. E.g. you can't sell air when you're outdoors. You can sell air to a colony on mars or to scubadivers. Likewise: you can't sell digital content because it cannot be made scarce once it's accessible on a PC. Infinite copies can and will be made. And again for al the corporations out there that try to make money of patenting hyperlinks: Whatever you're patent is, it will be copied (or remade or rebuilt or re-engineered or ...) and you will loose the money you invested.

Re:Yeah right!!

[andyh1978]

So are you telling me FF10 did not have pre-rendered MPEG-2 cutscenes? How about GTA3?

No, GTA3 doesn't have any pre-rendered MPEG cutscenes, they're all done quite nicely with the 3D engine.

Reply from MPEG4 Licensing Association

[frankie]

After the previous /. article about MPEG4, I wrote to licensing@mpegla.com and said "if you want Windows Media to win the streaming war, then keep the per-use fee". Much to my amazement, they sent back a reply that was actually relevant to my concerns. It wasn't the answer I wanted, but at least they have good form letters.

Received: from massive.mpegla.com ([12.41.161.2]) by mx2del.umbc.edu
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.4417.0
Subject: Your Recent Email
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:41:04 -0700
From: "MPEG-4 Visual Licensing" <MPEG-4VisualLicensing@mpegla.com>

Thanks for sharing your views with us regarding the reported MPEG-4 Visual licensing terms and your interest in using the MPEG-4 Visual Standard. I know this email may sound like a canned response, but since you took the time to write to us and others who wrote us raised similar concerns, we wanted to get back to you (and the others) to explain the situation. We understand that you have strong feelings about the MPEG-4 Visual licensing terms based on what you've heard, and we welcome your feedback. The license agreement is still in the process of being worked out, your views are important to us, and they will be taken into consideration. Similarly, I hope you will allow us this opportunity to clarify a few things that may have been misunderstood and to explain where this goes from here.

First, we would like to clarify the role of MPEG LA. MPEG LA's business is to make it possible for new technologies (like MPEG-4 Video) to enter the marketplace by making the essential intellectual property rights owned by many patent owners accessible to everyone on fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms under a single license. If there were no MPEG LA, the essential patent rights that made the MPEG-4 Visual technology possible would still have to be dealt with, but instead of having the opportunity to deal with one company for a single license that includes those rights, users' only option would be to deal with each patent holder individually. With MPEG LA, the marketplace is assured of ready access to MPEG-4 Visual essential patents owned by 18 different companies (soon there will be more, but our goal is to include as many essential patents as possible in one license; therefore, royalty rates will not increase during the term of the agreement even as new patent owners and more patents are included). What you've seen is the first step in that process.

We understand that the success of a licensing program relies on the success of the underlying technology. Therefore, our goal, like yours, is to promote the widest possible use of the MPEG-4 Visual standard, and we are sensitive to the need to structure a reasonable license that is consistent with marketplace conditions. To that end, we continue to work with the patent owners to assure that the license is responsive. Everything is in a state of constant review. If something isn't right, every effort is made to fix it. Because of MPEG LA's role, you have the opportunity to discuss your concerns with us, and we in turn can communicate them to the patent owners. We note that there are many different views to be considered, however, and that ultimately the marketplace will decide. We note also that there may be many reasons (having nothing to do with licensing terms) why someone may delay a product introduction or choose among competing alternatives. And, it would be a mistake to assume that any alternative is or will be free of patent licensing obligations or without additional charges of its own.

Finally, we understand that you do not agree with the implementation of a use fee. Given the nature of MPEG-4 Visual technology and the importance of encouraging the wide availability of MPEG-4 Visual decoders and encoders in the market, the patent owners' intention was that reasonable royalties should be shared among industry participants across the entire product chain and applies equally to both wired and wireless services (especially as the ability to distinguish between them disappears). The philosophy underlying the use fee was intended to be consistent with the expected flow of MPEG-4 video transactions so that those who can pay will and those who can't aren't expected to: thus, the use royalties to be paid by service providers are tied to remuneration - if service providers or content providers are paid for offering or providing MPEG-4 video, then patent holders are paid for the use of their patents; if service providers or content providers are not paid for offering or providing MPEG-4 video, then patent owners are not paid for the use of their patents. The entire license including the use fee, its application to broadcast/cablecast/multichannel environments, etc., is under study and will be the subject of further discussion.

This is just the beginning. The licensing terms were just announced on January 31, and the details of the MPEG-4 Visual license agreement are still being worked out. Because of the challenge posed by the effort to produce a joint licensing program requiring a consensus among at least 18 different patent owners and the yet undetermined future implementations and applications of the emerging MPEG-4 Visual technology, this may take several months to complete. There will be much discussion before all of this is sorted out, and changes may be expected. Again, we appreciate your contribution to this process and will keep you informed.

Sincerely, Larry Horn Vice President, Licensing

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?

What do you get for the fees?

[mpsmps]

The first question I would ask about the licensing fees is whether MPEG4 provides enough added value to justify choosing it over the less expensive/free alternatives.

The quality doesn't appear to justify it. My experience with various mpeg video formats is that they are not better (and probably worse) than On2's open-source and (reasonably priced) commercial solutions. It is certainly worth forming your own opinion by checking out On2's demos at their website.

As the quality is not sufficiently better to achieve an ROI based on reduced bandwidth, what is MPEG counting on to entice people to pay their fees? Several possibilities (some mentioned in the article):

• Brand value. mpeg is much better known than the alternatives. This can be a powerful asset. I switched my long-distance from Qwest to PowerNet Global. There is no difference in quality because PNG uses Qwest's infrastructure, but I pay less than half as much as I did, but I realize a lot more people go with Qwest than PNG. In effect, the extra fees go to paying Qwest's marketing, which gives them more market share than the extra price costs them.
  
• Useful features in MP4. I have no idea what features MP4 has over VP3/4/5 that are not visible by viewing the demos on the web, but the article suggests there may be some.
  
• Patent muscle. This surprised me as On2 has been around for some time and once had a market cap of about $1 billion (I miss those days!). They could have sued them when they had the prospect of getting real money in a judgment, where now there is no prospect of getting money from them or the open-source alternatives. I suspect this implies they don't have much of a case.
  
• Negotiating strategy. I have been involved in quite a few enterprise-level business negotiations. Both sides often take extreme initial positions to give them room to negotiate. The belief is that if you begin with your best offer, you'll have to settle on something unacceptable. My experience suggests this is a rational negotiating strategy. The mpeg team is going to face tough negotiating with the major media companies and may feel they need some things they can give away. In this case, they will expect to end up reducing their fees but still be better off than if they had started with a more reasonable offer.
  

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Re:reverse engineer a compatible player

[donglekey]

In the digital world this is often looked at as a solution but lossy compression is not like regular digital formats like MS Word documents or even programs. If you ocnvert from one compression format to another, it looks REALLY bad because both compression artifacts are there, and the size is only as good as the second compression technique used. Recompression unfortunatly is not an option at all.

Actually, no...

[A_Non_Moose]

...would you prefer EVERYTHING be rendered on the fly?

I'd prefer it be rendered on a monitor, video screen or tv.

A fly is too small to render images on, IMO.