MPEG 4, Windows Media 9 At War

Andy Tai writes "According to this News.com report, backers of MPEG 4 are protesting Microsoft's licensing fee structure for Windows Media 9, which is up to 50% less than MPEG 4's. They accuse Microsoft of blocking the progress to move to an 'open standard' (MPEG 4), posing unfair competition and threatening consumer choice. Of course, what is really needed is a third choice, a totally Free Software media codec solution that's competitive with both Windows Media and MPEG 4."

Comments

Re:Progress to move to an open standard

[IamTheRealMike]

It should be free for anyone.

Agreed, but I know what my dad would say to that (he works in the UK digital tv industry and is on several digital tv standards boards):

Him: "Son, things like MPEG aren't simple, and take a lot of smart people a lot of time to create. They should be rewarded for their efforts"

Me: "But how can something be an open standard if you have to pay for it?"

Him: "Who says open standards have to be free to implement? It's documented and vendor neutral, that makes it open in my eyes"

Me: "What about GPLd decoders though! Everyone will just end up using Ogg instead."

Him: "What about them? It's easy for people to recreate technologies once the expensive research has been done, Vorbis is based on similar ideas to MP3 for instance. Creating them in the first place takes money though, who's going to do that if all the codecs have to be free of charge?"

At that point I usually shut up, because I don't have a good answer. Looking at the way Ogg is developed I have tremendous respect for those guys, but they are working out their metaphorical basements. See how Tarkin (the research codec) lies abandoned? How would the people who worked on MPEG4 make money without licensing fees? Anybody? I'm sure there must be answers.

Heh, perhaps we can chat about this on irc over the weekend foo :)

Re:I'm extremely confused

[Koos Baster]

Before Open Source Software became a mainstream notion (say 1990), "Open" as in "Open Standards" used to imply that a company supplied descent documentation with it's API. That's about as open as SUN's OpenLook.

MPEG is "open" in that the standard was developed by a consortium of companies and other institutions. Therefore, it is propriety, patented, copyrighted and whatever... but these rights are not owned by a single company that's reluctant to reveal the ins and outs of its "standard". MPEG is open in that it openly discussed MPEG4's features before it hit the market.

So, although MPEG indeed extorts consumers for using their stuff just like any company, a consortium is a much healthier construction viewed from other company's perspectieves. And therefore ultimately (due to competition) also to customers.

So yes. It is confusing. (And I agree with the majority of posts that only a fully open standard, like Ogg Theora will settle this matter.)

--
The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Re:There *is* an alternative - XVID

[mcrbids]

From their website...

"XviD is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. "

MPEG4 is a framework for video codecs - not an algorithm in its own right.

With MPEG4 video codecs (COmpression/DECompression algorithms) are handled "plugin" style, much like the plugins to WinAmp or XMMS.

Using XviD would still require you to use the MPEG4 video framework, and thus you are still choosing between WM or MPEG4!

-Ben

Re:Wow.

[tshak]

But who said that they were selling WMP9 at a loss?