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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."
It's not often that people become angry because a corporation is selling things cheaply.
Rather than be mad at Microsoft for charging so little, I'd be mad at the MPEG body for charging what they do.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
If a competitor offers a comparable product for a lower price than you do, he will sell more. The MPEG 4 people should rather lower their fees instead of complaining how evil MS is for making low prices.
If they're angry that Microsoft is selling WMA9 for 50% less than MPEG-4, imagine how pissed they'd be with a fully Free software solution, selling for 100% less than MPEG-4.
It's like watching Hitler and Stalin Jello(tm)-Wrestle -- who to root for?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Let the MSFT-flaming commence.
Of course MPEG4 could be:
a) cheaper
b) better
or
c) all of the above.
I don't need another 'open standard' like MPEG2.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think that Microsoft is trying very hard to create the standard rather then accept a standard. As in the past, Microsoft wants to have ownership of important software and video is the next major software hurdle.
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
I can't believe that MPEG-LA would even consider airing this out publicly.
"You're killing innovation because you charge less than us"
Please... If you were really that worried about adoption of your standard you would either A) Drop your license rate, B) Open your codec completely or C) Make a better product than MS' and the cost is a moot point.
It's hilarious to see people cry foul at Microsoft when their business practices are practically the same.
--The space between my ears was intentionally left blank--
Let me get this straight... these folks say they're promoting an "Open Standard" that costs twice as much to implement as much as Microsoft's proprietary solution?
Did the definition of "Open" change while I wasn't looking?
How many standards based pieces of software has MS tried to extinguish. In most cases because it didn't fit with their assumption that it might just undercut their monopoly.
"posing unfair competition and threatening consumer choice" - Of course... Don't you think Intel would have said something like that when AMD started selling cheaper CPUs? (Not nessecarily better, just cheaper). And what about Star Office? Cheap or even for free at times. It's just plain ridiculous to start complaining about the opponents' pricing points, instead of pushing your own advantages. But, of course, as far as "consumer choice" is regarded, a free alternative would probably make both of the others go bonkers.
"If you go to the next town, going across a desert is a shorter way." - Pu-Li-Ru-La (Taito)
MP3 is the audio codec used in MPEG1. MP3 is short for MPEG1 LAYER 3. It is not MPEG3 (audio/video codec).
You don't understand what an mp3 is.
mp3 IS NOT MPEG3. It is MPEG1, layer 3.
MPEG4 is not an mp3 replacement.
See this for details.
Since when does open == free?
Most open standards cost nothing right? I mean, that's what I thought TCP/IP, XML, C/C++, and so forth were all about. So what's with calling something that requires a license fee to use an open standard?
If they were really open, at least in the sense that I have come to expect, then MS couldn't possibly undercut them.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
It seems like they're giving the whole idea of "open standards" a bad name. I realize it's more open than windows media, but I don't really think it's that open.
What am I missing? What are the licensing fees for?
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
They don't want Microsoft to block progress to an open standard? Then they should get rid of that stupid MPEG-4 licensing fees! It should be free for anyone. The licensing fee issues have blocked the progress of a lot of open source MPEG-4 codecs, like XviD.
maybe they'll both drown.
Best Slashdot Co
Have you not followed the entire Monopoly cases? Microsoft undercuts its competitors to the point where the competition simply CANNOT sell any lower because they dont have the BILLIONS in resources to stay in business like Microsoft can, their strategy is to out live the competitor. They (MPEG) will eventually go belly up, like most of Microsofts competitors. This is standard Microsoft Monopolistic tactics. Find market to take over, then release a product far cheaper than competitor with NO INTENTION of making a profit, watch competitor unable to compete with price wars, watch competitor fold shop. Microsoft wins!
As many such issues get ironed out, supporters of MPEG-4 want to ensure that it has room to prove itself in the market.
yes, as I recall, there was a college kid who coded a peer to peer network so that he could swap mp3s with his buddies. he called it Napster. the guy had absolutely no room to prove himself in the market and until the lawsuits rolled out, he was dominating it.
another college kid coded a windows gui for playing mp3s. he called it Win-Amp. he eventually got his product bought by AOL-TW for several million and with virtually no marketing, winamp is one of the most preferred mp3 players out there.
point is, you don't need "room to prove yourself". if your product is superior, the market will MAKE room for it.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
From a free software purists point of view, does it matter who wins? Neither format is an "open" format.... MPEG-4 may be developed by an industry consortium, but as with so-called RAND licencing, unless I misunderstand something their licencing fees make it impossible to implement the code legally in free software. (Is this the case? I'm guessing that MPlayer's mpeg4 support is dubious legally.)
What would be best is that if they make it contentions and messy enough fighting each other that both standards are weakend. That will make Ogg Theora look even that much more attractive to companies and the world at large once it comes out, and hasten the support of Ogg Theora. With some luck, that will become the standard, or at least a standard, that is so widely supported that those of us who care about and pay attention to these things can just use it.
-Rob
Let me understand this.... Microsoft didn't decide to price fix with the MPEG4 group, which would be an illegal practice, but instead decided to use their marker position to undercut them, which is also probably an illegal practice. This is the complaint?
It is true that MPEG-LA is being ridiculous. I have no sympathy for them and we can all see what 'reasonable and non-discrinatory' type licensing schemes get you.
That being said, keep in mind that what is true today may not be true tomorrow. It may not even be true today. Er...
Anyway:
1. WMP9 may be cheaper _right now_. MS can change that tomorrow. WMP10 may be 2x as much.
2. Just because the CODEC is cheaper doesn't mean its cheaper to implement Windows Media Streaimng over a solution streaming MP4.
3. WMP9 limits (to what degree is debateable) your audience.
4. Both of these technologies are on the path of the Dodo, IMO. Just as Real Technologies has fallen from techno-marvel to techno-garbage, so will these.
The past has shown that a truly open standard usually emerges in these areas, via governmental intervention or not. NTSC for North American television. Whatever guage the current railroad system runs on. An RJ-11 phone jack. Streaming video is just too young to be at that stage yet.
Kraft is protesting Shur-Fine Brand Macaroni and Cheese because it sells for 50% less.
They think MS should be required to sell for more. How the hell does this help consumers? It doesn't. They're simply trying to ride on anti-MS sentiment and maintain the rate which they can fleece the public.
Unless MPEG-4 is significantly better than Windows Media, they should drop their prices and be competitive. Suggesting that the consumers should be forced to pay more for similar service JUST because it's not MS is ridiculous.
If they think their product is so much better that it warrants a higher price do what Kraft does and market the damn thing as such. If it's not, cut the price. That's the way a free economy works, you have a right to charge whatever you want, but don't have the right to mandate what your competitors charge.
I'm confused. If the standard is "open" it means the format of the data and the algorithims used to produce it as disclosed, right? (Among other things...)
But for MPEG-4 someone wishing to write code which is compatiable has to pay money to license the technology for every copy distributed, correct?
What is the good of that? A "closed" system couldn't be legally reversed (DMCA.. grrr...) but any implementor's could license the spec from the owner and then do it.
So what has been gained? The ability to go to jail for writing the application rather than for cracking the format?
Sorry to rain on your parade, but Ogg Vorbis is not a replacement for MPEG4. Vorbis competes with MP3, which means "Mpeg-1 Layer 3". Obviously, the audio layer. MPEG-4 is a next generation A/V standard, like MPEG-1 and MPEG-2.
Currently we have no Free Software alternative to these codecs, tho OGG Theora may be done in the next year.
I'm surprised people even think about OpenDivX today. OpenDivX is dead, for a long time now (more than a year).
In case you didn't know what happened: Project Mayo suddenly closed the CVS, removed the source code and used that source code to create their own, proprietary DivX 4 codec. OpenDivX isn't developed anymore. It's codebase is dead. The latest release (from more than a year ago) is full of bugs.
Oh, and DivX is not OpenDivX in case you didn't know. They are 2 completely different things.
I'm afraid MPEG will have to make do on half their expected revenue. (Frankly, I suspect it'll be more than half; by cutting their own prices, they'll gain more customers, and since costs for royalties are pretty much arbitrary, they won't have more in expenses to lay out.)
Microsoft can price their product however they please. When they start causing problems, by restricting the platforms their codec performs on, or restricting the performance on other platforms, or if they wait 'til MPEG is dead and then raise their rates, THEN you can slam them for monopolistic practices.
In the meantime, projects like Ogg will proceed, as will DivX, producing competitors MS may prove hard to beat. So let 'em try to take over the market...
Think about it.
I agree that it's silly in a capitalist society to be complaining that someone's selling something for less than you.
Microsoft has a significant other source of income. They can afford to LOSE money selling their codec licensing, as it will strenghen the hold of their OS on the market.
the mpeg4 people, as far as I know, only do that, and can't really afford to lose money on it.
Look at the xbox. MS lost massive quantities of money on it, and didn't care, because it gave them a foothold into a new market that they wanted to dominate.
Yes, on the surface, it's a stupid and silly request. But when you consider the above, it's bordering on unfair competition.
just my thoughts.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
well, there's always the convience of being able to do EVERYTHING at the computer. if I want to watch a DVD, I'll toss that in my DVD drive. if I want to listen to some music, I'll pick a few thousand songs and throw them in winamp (yes, they're all legal copies:p) my best friend is pretty much the same way, except he plays his gamecube games using a wave-bird IR controller and the video in for his PC. not to mention the overwhelmingly large amount of stuff that we can do on computers that can only be done on a computer.
it's really a matter of personal opinion. if you view your box as a tool and your other electrionics as fun, then you'll naturally gravitate to your other electronics. however, I tend to view my computer as fun and something that I just so happen to be able to get work done on. so I'd rather be on a computer.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Let's make a deal: tell me how do you store videos in OGG format and I'll tell you how I archive all the pr0n I create in gzipped textfiles.
Signatures are for stupids.
Apple warned them that their rates were too high. They had to fight tooth and nail to get MPEG-LA to drop its rates to their current level, maybe now they'll listen...
This isn't just about the codec. It's the standard. XviD implements MPEG-4. However, to use XviD, you still have to pay licensing fees to MPEG4-LA. That's why XviD calls itself an "educational project" so the developers don't have to pay the licensing fees. But the users of the codec still have to pay for a license.
Their pricing may be a lot less than MPEG-4, but it's almost identical to the pricing already announced by realnetworks for their proprietary audio and video codecs.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander and who was screamig about Real's pricing? I can't see a proprietary solution effectively competing with MPEG in the consumer market, so it's probably the only way they can make headway.
Simon Hibbs
1) Drop the license rate.
MS called it "cutting off their air supply" if I recall correctly.
2) Open your codec completely
Then how can you get any license revenue from it?
3) Make a better product
It was widely regarded that the versions of NS were far superior to IE up to 4.0 (and there it's a debate).
The foul is something called dumping. The practice of below cost in an effort to drive competitors out of the market.
Now whether MS was dumping or MPEG-LA was gouging is something to be decided by the courts.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Of course not. Nobody who doesn't have a $40 Billion war chest and a direct distribution back door hook (Tools->Windows Update) into 95% of the world's computers could possibly compete.
That's why we have laws that are theoretically supposed to prevent this kind of market abuse.
While I agree with you in principle, in practice it doesn't hold wrt M$. Why? Because M$ IS a court-recognized illegal monopoly violating just about every anti-trust law in existence then and now. Monopolists get to live by different regulations than others, particularly convicted monopolists. The problem here is that MPEG-4 really cannot compete. M$ has such a huge cash reserve and cash flow that even if MPEG-4 matches M$ price on WMP, M$ can still go lower, even to 0 cost for as long as it takes to kill MPEG-4.
While MPEG-4 should drop its price as Apple suggests, M$ cannot be left to run as they wish because of their proven illegal activities. They WILL go to 0 pricing if anyone tries to compete (MPEG-4) on price. M$ can afford it for a lot longer than any (even better) innovators or software producers.
That isn't the market in action as it is supposed to work and is envisioned by la-la land capitalism apologists, that is abuse of monopoly position and leveraging monopoly in one area to gain monopoly in another. Illegal.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
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
There is.... It's called XVID
This would be like Shur-Fine Brand Mac and Cheese protesting Kraft for selling for 50% less. The issue would be if Shur-Fine could prove that Kraft's selling price is actually below the cost.
There is a huge difference between arguing about premium priced products versus below-cost products. MPEG-LA would have to prove that MS is actually selling their codec below cost.
BTW, you don't have a right to charge whatever you want in the US. There are anti-gouging and anti-dumping laws that keep things in check.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Computer playback is a relatively minor aspect of MPEG-4. MPEG-4 projects are in progress on integrating playback in everything from replacing the GSM codecs for audio transmission in cell phones, to HD DVD with red laser, to replacing MPEG-2 in set top boxes, to replacing Flash for interactive presentations.
MPEG-4 is really meant to replace MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, not QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media. Of course, given those open standards (with HIGHER licensing fees) are responsible for probably 98% of all digital video watched worldwide, that's the real game. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 are used in VideoCD, DVD, digital cable, etcetera.
Windows Media 9 is incredibly good for computer-based authoring and playback, but is a Win32 only system right now. MPEG-4 already works on all kinds of devices.
My video compression blog
No, DivX Networks pays their licensing fee to MPEG-LA. If you write an app that uses their codec, you don't have to pay an additional fee for the video codec.
My video compression blog
Does anyone remember that browsers didn't use to be free until Internet Explorer came along ?
Netscape was de-facto free well before IE came along. Early on, they figured that they needed to get the browser out to everybody to make it THE platform. Anyone that actually paid for it, well that was found money. They really wanted to make money from servers, bu Apache and IIS killed them on this.
What we have here is two greedy organizations battling it out. If we want to avoid getting dragged into this, we really do need open video standards.
Open source != open standard.
An open source codec that implements an open standard without licensing fees, now that would be sweet...
Microsoft's spokesman:
;-)
"Lowering and removing licensing barriers is not only great for the consumer electronics and software industries, but also offers consumers the benefits of better quality video at smaller file sizes," said Michael Aldridge, lead product manager for Windows Digital Media division at Microsoft.
I don't think I have anything to add to this except a smiley.
Who is RTFM and when will he help me with Unix?
As I understand it, Microsoft's CODECs are heavily based on MPEG4. Aren't they voilating the patents already at this point?
As for MPEG-LA and the rest of the "standards comittee." There should be absolutely no charge for "standards" that are issued by a "standard comittee," unless that "standard comittee" actually provides something (software, hardware, etc.). Otherwise, the whole thing is a thinly veiled process to come up with ideas and then profit from someone else's actual work.
At the point where you label it "standard" and push everyone to adopt it for "compatibility," you should lose the right to charge for the idea.
Xesdeeni
But having to say "gnu/mpeg" all the time would be annoying as hell....
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
So what would be a fair price? This does seem to be a little suspicious -- the very low price -- but how much is something like that worth? For that matter, how much is any piece of software worth. I never understood those people who were trying to get money back from MSFT for overpricing Office. I mean, how can you even determine what the price is for something like that? Isn't it whatever the market can bear?
-- Hobbits suck!
Anger meets MPEG-4 licensing scheme
Companies fear costly MPEG-4 licenses
Apple backs MPEG-4 despite fee dispute
MPEG LA claim that Microsoft is blocking progress? As my dear old grandmother used to say, bitch please.
This is RAND licensing, folks. The same fine mess the W3C wants to get into. It hinders adoption, plain and simple, and locks out the Free Software community. I don't mind so much if companies want to keep intellectual property to themselves, but don't go around claiming it's a fucking "standard" if I can't implement it without paying you a fortune for the right to do so.
Has Microsoft ever, in its entire history, made a better product than the competition, sold it for a better price, and made a profit doing so? I'm not trolling; I'm genuinely curious to know if this has ever happened.
yes and no--
What Microsoft has generally done through the DOS and Windows market has been to commoditize the hardware market and have a large volume, low cost model (compare the cost of a PC with Windows to a Mac). This has not really resulted in a better product, but it has really resulted in a better price. This in turn has helped to lead to:
1) the near ubiquity of personal computing and
2) tremendous profits for Microsoft.
Unfortunately they have also been extremely anti-competitive towards competitors, such as Digital Research (which did produce a better product-- DR-DOS), and quasi-competitors such as Netscape (whose ubiquity was threatening Microsft's control on the OS). I suspect that this latest spat with MPEG-4 vs WMA9 is the same sort of pattern.
The fundamental problem for Microsoft though is that unlike the telephone companies, there isn't a large physical infrastructure that they control, and unlike the power companies and LATA-based telecoms, there is no natural division of any infrastructure that they can control, so this monopoly is not natural. Controlling formats is how they try to make this up.
There are two problems which make the Microsoft monopoly impossible to maintian in my opinion. The first is Moor's Law, which is resulting in longer lifespans for computers as the computers are now powerful enough to meet business needs for a longer period of time. This results in fewer sales of Microsoft OS's because the upgrade cycle is lengthened. Why do you think they are pushing subscription licensing?
The other is a more subtle problem. The growth of the internet has made it more possible to effectively collaberate on large software development projects between companies, and with developers across the world. This has made developments like OpenOffice, GNOME, KDE, and Linux possible, and it is in part due to the ubiquity of personal computing which has been one of the hallmarks of Microsoft's success. Open Source software has a lower cost model than Microsoft, and is able hence to win at Microsoft's own game. I am sure that a video codec is probably in the works to compete with WMA and MPEG-4. In the end, I am confident that, except for niche markets, that open source software (and similar systems) will eventually take over most markets.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP