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China Proposes Rival Video Format
Richard Finney writes "Yahoo News is reporting that
the Chinese government is supporting an effort to develop a homegrown standard, called 'AVS,' for compressing digital audio and video in order to avoid paying royalties
on proprietary compression schemes.
The AVS groups website is online but in Chinese."
In case anybody else hasn't noticed, China is turning out to be -- in fact, already is, simply by its sheer size -- the world's largest booster of open source and royalty-free hardware and software in the world. Open Source and Free Software movements couldn't ask for a more powerful force to have on their side, and they are consistently expanding and improving what they offer -- first Red Flag Linux, then the dragon chip, and now this. Woo!
"no other country could play them." ... until the hardware manufacturers get wind of the fact that there's huge demand for AVS capable players....
why don't they support http://www.theora.org/ instead of building their own from scratch?
The Chinese seem determined to avoid patent issues by developing their own chips, and now their own video formats.
The intellectual property laws that were supposed to guarantee our technology a dominant position may, in practice, be shutting U.S. companies out of future marketplaces, as tech customers seek a way around excessive royalties and restrictions.
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
Communism may not be a good fit with physical goods and commodities and stuff like that, but I think China is setting a good example with intangible, non-rivalrous goods (IP). Once they design a chip, or a video compression scheme, no one can exhaust its usefulness. This is a good thing.
Now don't think I'm going so far out there. We have similar ideas here, and we at least pretend to practice them. That's the idea behind University research and stuff like that (at least before universities had the right to own the products of their research).
Here in America, I think we need more research done for the public benefit, paid with public money. There are so many intricacies to the vision I have, and I can anticipate many objections, but I'm not going to write a whole long post here. I'm just making a positive suggestion here.
Not yet, I think they want a truly free VIDEO format, not just a codec. All current ones have some kind of baggage on them meaning they where developed by a company that at any time may decide to start charging. Remember what happenend to the royalty free MP3 and gif formats?
I am not really sure why this is a money matter for china, unless they are planning on becoming huge content providers the cost of licensing current formats is peanuts. I think it is more political. A truly free standard would not see chinese money going to other nations who are after all their idiological enemy.
Lets just hope that they make it a truly opensource solution, would mean no DRM since DRM can only work with closed source.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
...you cheer on a country with such a horrid human rights record simply because its software ideals appear to align with your own.
No, but you bullshit the world, and pretend you're all one big free democratic nation.
That's good...isn't it? I mean, would you rather 6 BILLION people collectively accomplished nothing, or would it be better if the country became better developed. China developing could eventually mean they actually contribute to the worldwide pool of technology. China doesn't have laws against stem cell research, so labs there could eventually provide treatments for the rest of us.
Sure, their government is oppressive (so is ours, its just a matter of degree). And maybe it will keep them down. But if they manage to reform it, become a prosperous nation, its good news for the world.
Nuclear weapons mean they are unlikely to be conquering the globe for land, so we don't need to worry about that angle.
I admire their technical prowess, but they're not doing it with the good of humanity in mind. It's all about proving that they're not trapped in luohouzhuyi, literally "fall-behind-ism." They've failed as a communist party, so now the only thing keeping them in power is trying to prove that they're making China strong enough to resist foreign interference. That's what this project feels like to me.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
This is why we need to support Open-Source lobbying efforts. Right now, sending a native Chinese lobbyist to push China to adopt the work of the Ogg team as their official standards would be a great coup for the Open Source movement.
China never really has gotten over that "we are the center of the earth" mentality have they?
In my experience the USA has the same problem at times.
Here's to China having a clue.
You know what happens when you rely on parts of everybody else's?
You're sucked into bullshit in South America and the Middle East, because you need their oil.
China was the center of the earth for quite some time in terms of technology and civilization. So, they've been in a slump - Communism didn't help out much there.
However, they've the manpower and availible resources to thrash anyone else if they ever decided to get rid of the Communist craziness.
And they seem to be slowly moving in that direction. That should scare the shit out of every other first world nation on the planet.
A propretary video format allows ONLY the playing of that format within it's borders. Since the Chinese also don't like the idea of "foreign ideologies" (blocked CNN, blocked Western websites) streaming into the country, proprietary video is a way to only allow the masses to view what the government deems is "safe."
Democratic Capitalism states it's aim as using human work to generate value. The people who do the work vote for a government that pools a portion of that for investing the the community with 'public works'.
Taxation of profit is the promise that the government makes to the people.
Tax collectors have the most powerful range of search and siezure laws on their side.
Here in the UK a VAT collector can, with reasonable cause, turn up and any hour of the day or night and provided he is accompanied by two police officers he can enter your premises even if that means breaking in. No warrant, no judge, sieze first - ask questions later.
So why is it just that the world's most profitable companies avoid paying fair taxation?
If you believe in Democracy you believe in taxation, that's the deal.
It is not good enough to set up "the Foundation" and do public work. The will of the people is that you pay the government and we'll take care of it from there, thank you very much.
It is in this way that monopolies should not threaten their customers. Taxation is one of the checks and balances against run-away profiteering. If you had to pay 90% tax on the top end of the balance sheet then diminishing returns act as a disincentive.
The stagnant two party system that has gripped the major democracies is anti-freedom.
Dynasties are broken by internal power struggles spilling out into civil war or barbarian hordes.
Demonizing the "others", one nation under god.
But break they will and break they must.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Now I know many people's definition of "fair share" vary, and I'm not going to pretentiously claim what the Founding Fathers would have wanted, but it seems that an increasing number of people believe that simply existing inside our borders entitles them to a share of the country's collective wealth.
There used to be a time when people relied upon hard work, innovation, and ambition to achieve success, rather than expect it to be handed to them. Both corporations and individuals are prone to this new entitlement mentality, and it's the working stiffs that are getting screwed.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Ok, there are 6 billion people on the planet, but 90% of them cant afford to use a vcr or dvd player, so you cant market to them.
... glass houses, stones, etc...
/.r who pointed out that whilst China's gov is slowly getting better, ours is quite quickly getting worse.
Let's just say that your local media is more likely to tell you that another country is Bad(tm) then tell you about the stuff your own country is up to.
I'm not condoning any form of human rights abuse, I'd really like to live in a nice, happy, peaceful world, but let's face it; the west is not exactly utopia either. I saw a post around here the other day from a chinese
Warning: May contain nuts
It could also show that China's leaders understand the value of standards that are open rather than controlled by a small number of very rich companies. It is interesting that if this pans out, China's video market will be more open to competition than the West.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's kind of weird that everytime someone mentions China's human right record(note: China, not US's oil ally Saudi Arabia), they get mod up instantly.
This must be an old trick to get modded...
For god's sake, all of us know China's human right record. Your daily TV newsprogram mentions it once every week just to make sure no one is missing that particular dose of history(and they would also add China is a communist nation, but they would never mention the actual definition of communism).
For a change, how about tell us something we don't already know, like the progress they are making?
Or we could talk about something you might not be too familiar with, like our own human rights record. Don't forget, we used to be a segregated society, and look how long it took us to get out of that system.
Who mods this junk up anyway? Sure China is all "evil", but the previous poster was just pointing out that the US is "bad" and getting worse, while China is getting less "evil", and implying that pretty soon the USA is bound to cross that line to "evil", while China may possible cross over to "bad" in time. I hope that translation into you simple language will help you to understand.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.