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Microsoft Code in Every HD-DVD Player
Neophytus writes "The DVD Forum steering group has given preliminary backing to Microsoft's VC-9 codec along with H.264 and MPEG-2 as mandatory playback modes for HD-DVD players. Having this technology, the most fundamental part of Windows Media Player 9, in every new DVD player could well give Microsoft major leverage into the Cable and Satellite TV markets where currently MPEG2 dominates. The approval is pending an update in licencing terms and other conditions within 60 days."
What are the licensing terms for MS's VC-9 codec? Is it free, or is every HD-DVD player manufacturer going to be required to pay MS a licensing fee? I don't necessarily mind MS being the ones to author a commonly used codec, but I'm pretty violently opposed to them getting automatic royalties on every HD-DVD player manufactured, and getting stuck in the same position we were with decss regarding open source players.
Coming soon to Slashdot: meta-meta-moderation!
Microsoft has clearly working towards extending their influence from PCs to more general game console/home entertainment centres.
My question is, why has there been no professioanl lobbyist for open source involved with this workgroup? At this level, technical merits don't matter. It's all about politics (which is kind of a good thing; I'd hate to live in a technocratic soceity run by engineers).
The owls are not what they seem
Though seeing as how both MS and most media conglomerates are looking towards DRM lately, I would imagine it's just around the corner.
If they would have loaded these things with DRM right away there would have been more outcry from the knowledgable public (bit of an oxymoron there). Just having their plain codec onboard so many machines gives them the leverage to toss in DRM when the time is right.
Microsoft doesn't make money off Media Player. It isn't a real selling point for Windows. Media Player isn't used in any productive manner by businesses.
But, if you make sure that your video codec, which only Media Player will can ever use to it's full potential, is the de facto standard, and insure that Media Player only runs on Windows.....
At first sight, this seemed scary - more Microsoft, more monopoly power, etc.
However, this quote reduced the fear factor for me: "Last September, Microsoft submitted its Windows Media Series 9 as a standards candidate to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE)--a first for the company and a marked departure from its longtime commitment to keeping its technology proprietary".
At least they went to an appropriate standards body and are sharing this codec with the public. It's an interesting thing when a technology takes the path from proprietary to standard. Lots of technologies take the path from research -> standard, and not as many go from proprietary -> standard.
"All those fears were on their mind," Majidimehr said. "At the end of the day they said, We're going to trust Microsoft."
Now, forgive me from laughing at that, but my mind is wandering towards the various ways that Microsoft will exploit this for their own gain:
1) They can increase the licence fees on the new DVD-9 standard. That's not ineffective because once endorsed and DVDs are released, all players will have to support (and pay) for Microsoft's DVD-9 even if other formats are supported.
2) They will 'extend' the standard. You can see this coming, can't you? "New DVD-9.1 with extra tracks that are only accessible if you buy Microsoft's new dvd player/software/media unit... etc. etc." This is pretty predictable.
3) They will offer discounts for those players that remove support for the other standards, thus forcing DVD producers to produce in the only format guaranteed to be multiplayer. Again, pretty predictable -- it's what they always do.
4) They will patent the transmission of "over the air" DVD-9, so any future Tivo like device will have to pay royalties.
I could go on, but you see where Microsoft's going with this. It's a horrible, horrible decision for the DVD steering committee. They've just voted themselves into the guillotine. "Trust Microsoft" -- sheesh!
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
And why is that?
Anyone can buy a license for writing a legit DVD player for Linux today. I don't see how that would be different in the future.
Just license the damn thing.
The owls are not what they seem
Buy yourself a clue.
MPEG2/4 requires payment of royalties as well.
"No facts, no reasons, no nothing."
/. story says really clearly 'proprietary codec in international standard'.
Yes that is the description of your posting. To the rest of us the
That is a lot of facts with a lot of implications.
If you study the history of standards and technology, you will know that that will most likely be very bad for consumers in the end (or for the standard itself to take off to begin with: what do you think will happen with the chinse hd-dvd standard with this news?)
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
You are clearly viewing this from the techie's point of view. All that is secondary for those who get to decide.
The owls are not what they seem
Yes that is the description of your posting. To the rest of us the /. story says really clearly 'proprietary codec in international standard'.
Yeah, well, apparently "the rest of you" can't read, or just prefer to bash Microsoft without justification.
As a condition to Microsoft before it could establish VC-9 as a standard, it had to strip VC-9 of proprietary status, Majidimehr said. The company satisfied that condition when it submitted the underlying video compression technology to SMPTE last year and opened up its software to developers for the first time. Now developers can download the technical spec, build on it and not be beholden to Microsoft.
It is a fact that Microsoft has hoodwinked and swindled their way to the top. Ask about GO, STAC, DR-DOS, forged video evidence at the anti-trust trial, rigged bencharks, blatant lies and FUD, any period of their history, including that the very MS-BASIC that Bill Gates so infamously complained about being stolen when he himself had stolen the computer time to develop it, and you will find blatant decption and skulduggery.
Then the other side of it, what has Microsoft actually done that is new? You sure won't find much. They are excellent at doing a shoddy job of copying others.
Consider a serial killer, say that guy in Canada who murdered several dozen prostitutes. Would you suggest that some other prostitute should take a chance on that guy?
I doubt it. So why should anyone believe a thing Microsoft says, or have any expectations for future decency in any of their current activities?
Reputations take time to build. Microsoft has shot their own reputation so many times that it will take a wholesale change of corporate leadership to change their reputation, and years and years of reinforcing that new sense of ethics. In the meantime, they continue to reinforce their current reputation. Apologists like yourself do them no good.
Infuriate left and right
Not quite so feasible... When it comes to mass-production of decoding chips, very low power (in both the wattage and processing power area), highly customized decoders are far far more economical than general purpose processors. Even the Crusoe is high power by the standards of these processors. Additionally, it is hard to predict the processing capacity of the player unless you enforce a standard hardware set anyway. You say today a Crusoe can handle any codec, but what if some break through occurs that can be implemented handily in a specialized hardware, but no software implementation can work with the Crusoe used in the mass market at the time? Additionally, the extra few megs of storage required to be that flexible is a lot more expensive than the current requirements.
Just take some time to think about the cheapest general processor based system you have ever seen that is capable of decoding MPEG-2 without dropping frames, and then compare it to the sub-50 dollar DVD players out there. It is a nice dream, but the price is a lot higher overall, and customers would be resistant to such a market change.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Play a 640x360 DivX on your machine. Watch the CPU usage. Then multiply by 9 to get a 1920x1080 pic. Then imagine that in every DVD player. A hardware chip can scale - simply more parallell decoding circuits. If you can do it just as easily with a CPU, apply for a job at Intel or AMD right now.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You're missing the point. In this case Microsoft doesn't give a damn about hackers. They want to own the industry like they own the desktop, and they want to strengthen their hold on the desktop. Microsoft pattented property being required for playing a HD-DVD will be the tool they need to be sure that no official Linux release ever has a HD-DVD player. Sure, a few hackers may add on after the fact, but for the masses Windows software will be able to play HD-DVDs and Linux will not.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Concentrating only on users (i.e. neglecting HD-DVD player producers), if every man were an island unto himself, then yes.
Vendors, of course, will have to pay royalties to MSFT if they want to be able to claim to support the standard (which will be important).
Unfortunately, we're not islands. We don't produce all of the movies we watch ourselves, so we're not free to choose the format. If MSFT's format doesn't see widespread use, then it's not a big deal. If the format becomes the major format for future DVD movies, then there's no way of going around it short of not watching HD-DVD. And while one can vote with one's wallet, that only has a certain scope. I.e. if the general masses don't care enough, there's not much you can do about it, aside from throwing your gnat's weight into it.
Personally, given how the current Western corporations are all about screwing the end user (Palladium/NGSCB, DRM at every turn, LaGrande, DVD-CSS, and its followup), I see a huge market for Asia to snag. And I, for one, will cheer them on if they let me do what I want with the movies I purchase. I bought the music/movies; I'm not stealing them or helping others steal them; they have no right to abridge my use of it.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Actually, what this will involve is not actual Microsoft-authored code in each compatible player, but software written using patented and licensed Microsoft algorithms.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
exactly, to submit the standard, ms had to specifically remove the codec from its proprietary 'vault' and make it publically licensable. after the years of development that they've put into their video compression, this is quite the move for them - considering that years ago the idea of a microsoft standard was simply breaking existing ones with proprietary extensions. frankly the video compression is the ONE thing that microsoft gets right. not that i want ms tech in my dvd player mind you.
Gekido's Lair
How many people really out the longing for better than DVD resolution and are willing to pay for it.
The only obvious reason to push this new-and-improved DVD is to try for a whole new round of DRM lock-in. Since they lost the CCS battle, they'll start over with DVD-HD. Feh.Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Really?
Let's take a look at the T2 disc that is available with WM9 HD content now.
To watch it, you have to install the player on the disc.
Then, the player needs to "call home" to make sure you're allowed to use it (via the Internet).
Then, the player needs to be updated.
Then the update needs to call home.
If it hasn't crashed by then (mine did, three times), you MIGHT get to watch your DVD.
Remember DIVX? Not the codec, the abomination Circuit City was pushing as an alternative to what we now call DVD? Basically a dial-home, pay-per-view DVD format.
Do we REALLY want that whole scenario all over again?
I HATE the way companies try to push all of this before the general consumer populace is even aware it's occurring. DVD early-adopters won the DIVX battle, but primarily because Circuit City was the only distributor, and they were easy to boycott. They were also in poor financial shape to begin with, and couldn't bankroll a protracted battle to push their format through.
MS can. MS will. And our DVD players will have to dial home to ask for permission every time we want to watch a DVD. And you can be certain that "ask permission" will morph into "pay for use" at some point in the future.
.@.
Paranoia anyone?
Microsoft submitted a codec standard. That standard was accepted as one of the new codecs that will be implimented (by the manufacturers) into the new style DVD players. MS has no control over individual implimentations. This is no different then how some DVD players can now play DivX DVDs (DVDs containing a DivX 5 compatiblity mode encoded avi), except that it will be standard on all units, not just a few special ones.
How does this benefit Microsoft?
Since it doesn't give them any control over your DVD player, no special software installed (you can't install software on a DVD player) like the crackhead suggests, they must be getting something. What they are getting is a foot in the DVD door. They can now make more comprehensive DVD burning tools in Longhorn (MS is also likely looking at trying to get digital video camera makers to support the codec too, so you can seamlessly move video from camera, to computer, to DVD-R). The other $advantage$ is that they are now the IBM of one of the new DVD codecs. If studios want to encode DVDs in this manner (which MS will of course strongly market it as the being the "best" choice) they'll want to use tools from the people who know the codec best, which means MS can make lots of money licencing encoders to the people who have lots of money to spend.
Theoretically, you're right....
That is, until MS wins the contract with most manufacturers to be the implementator of the software. Then, you'll no longer be able to separate the codec and the DRM package that comes with it.
Does bundling sound familiar?