Microsoft Codec Required For Blu-Ray Players

dmayle writes "According to ExtremeTech, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (which consists of many big names, like Sony, Philips, and Pioneer) has decided to mandate Microsoft's VC-1 video codec. With HD-DVD incorporating Microsoft's patented video codecs as well, what will happen to the state of media players on Open Source? (Here's an additional source for Blu-Ray info)."

Comments

MSFT media domination begins?

[garcia]

Ahem, it seems that they are making their inroads to Media domination...

Microsoft will maintain its neutral position in supporting the emerging high definition video formats, said Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows Media division, in a statement.

MSFT will remain "neutral" as long as they are getting paid royalties to use the codec in the design. This will likely mean that Open Source alternatives will be shutout although with other technologies OSS has been able to make its way around those roadblocks.

How long until the MPAA gives in or will yet ANOTHER media format be created that won't include MSFT or OSS?

They're doing what now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone please explain this to me is words that actually made sence to a person that has no idea what codec and all that stuff is?

What about Dolby Digital?

[gpinzone]

How is this different than mandating all current DVD player support Dolby Digital? This doesn't preclude the standard from accepting other open source codecs. Market forces have pretty much made DTS decoding standard in all current players.

Re:What will happen?

[mukund]

You forget DVD Jon has not retired yet unlike an MPAA official.

Chinese manufacturers

[doofusclam]

Does anyone know what a ballpark cost would be for licensing the IP for a blu-ray player, including the MS and other patented bits?

With all these codecs on board i'd imagine it's a lot more than for regular DVD, and seeing the Chinese manufacturers attitude towards this they'll just go right ahead with their own patent-free platform. Hollywood will ignore them, at first, then they'll panic like mad knowing that a couple of billion users can only buy pirated copies of their films. Brilliant, way to go.

Re:How is this news?

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Blu-Ray Disc (BD) already supported MPEG-2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and now just added Microsoft VC-9. So what?

It's important because if you want to build an HD-DVD (and now Blu-Ray DVD) player, you have to support all the codecs specified by the format. You only have a choice when you're a content producer deciding which codec to use. You can't just build a player and decide "Well, I like MPEG but I don't like Microsoft, so I'll omit the VC-9 codec." If you do that, your player won't get certified. And of course, users will complain when their VC-9 encoded discs won't play on your player.

So now what do you do if you're building, say, a Linux player? Now you have to acquire IP rights from not only the MPEG people, but also from Microsoft. Think that'll be easy?

Yes, this will be reverse-engineered in some part of the world which is not dominated by the Corporate/Government oligarchy that exists in the US. In fact, the xine/mplayer stuff can probably handle it today. But you can be sure that both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will carry a brand new scrambling system as well. Perhaps DVD Jon will crack it, but don't count on it happening quickly.