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State of the JPEG2000 Standard?

Posted by Cliff on from the image-revolutions dept.

ehb asks: "With all the (r)evolutions going on in networking (IPv6), video (MPEG4/H.264) and audio (MPEG4 AAC), I was wondering what happened to that big image compression promise of some years ago: JPEG2000. According to the official JPEG2000 page, although the entire standard not is completed, the important parts are, which would allow JPEG2000 to function as a still-image replacement for the old JPEG! I have seen lists of software programs that implement (parts?) of the JPEG2000 specification, but missed the important ones (web browsers, etc). There even exists an Open source implementation of the codec, so what is holding everything back? The benefits over normal JPEGs are huge, so can someone shed some light on the hold-up?" Back in April of 2002, JPEG2000 was "coming soon", and it was touted as being the "the future of imaging", but after that the hype seems to have dried up. What happened to this promising specification? Did another format surpass it (PNG, perhaps)?

3 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Inertia by Directrix1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, for one JPEG2000 takes forever to encode/decode. There are some really complex computations going on in the background, and regular JPEG is much faster (although the quality isn't nearly as good). As far as PNG goes, the best compression it can get is JPEG'd data. Another interesting where is it is the MNG. The supposed replacement for the animated GIF is barely supported anywhere, and for some reason Mozilla just recently REMOVED support of it.

    --
    Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
  2. Re:My own thoughts by idiotfromia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    PNG hasn't caught on because Internet Explorer has yet to properly support it.

    You can sign the petition for Internet Explorer PNG support.

  3. Re:My own thoughts by nkodengar · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Perhaps it's because people have it set in their minds that a JPG is a JPG, and this is being touted as Yet Another Image Format. Same reason (I think) that PNG, though it is enjoying wide popularity against GIF, hasn't totally caught on yet.

    PNG images are fantastic if quality is an issue and bandwidth is not, the alpha transparency is also fantastic for web designers, and many fantastic effects can be done with it. Unfortunately only users with good web browsers will see the benefits of png transparency. Internet Explorer users just get an ugly grey background on thanks to M$ breaking proper png support a version or so ago... :(