SMPTE Adoption Of WMV9 Hits Some Snags

SysKoll writes "EETimes is running an interesting story about the future of the video codecs for HD DVDs. The Redmond Beast convinced both the Blu-ray Disc Association and the DVD Forum to adopt its WMV9 video codec over MPEG4 for the upcoming VC-1 standard that is mandated for high-definition video devices. That was a huge coup for MS. Now it turns out that Microsoft cheated and lied: its code is not as good as MPEG 4, the WMV9 reference implementation is not available, and the WMV9 test suite does not exercise all the features. The SMPTE might drop WMV9 after all. Apparently, a highly technical standard body is harder to snowjob than the usual clueless consumers."

Comments

Hmm

[__aavhli5779]

What disturbs me is that a 'standards body' would've considered a completely closed, proprietary codec anyway. Patent-encumbered is one thing. Black-box is another. What were they thinking?

Microsoft should lose this one

[upsidedown_duck]

Windows Media Player would obviously play MPEG-4, but other platforms would not always have WMV9. MPEG-4 would be more ubiquitous, regardless of the "follow the winner" attitude people have about Microsoft. Microsoft really needs to be given the boot once and a while, and this is a good opportunity to do so.

Re:Microsoft should lose this one

[julesh]

Legally, doing this is a grey area (it breaks the EULA).

mplayer is, I believe, a European product. European anti-competition laws forbid tying the sale of one product to that of another in a different marketplace for any company that holds a monopoly in either (e.g. Microsoft). Therefore, this term in MS's EULA is unenfoceable in Europe.

Promising

[Pan T. Hose]

It all looks very promising, the amazing technology advancement is exciting, the quality will be truly outstanding, the article is very interesting, however the real question is: will we be able to watch our favourite movies legally using our favourite, free software in the future? Will we labeled "pirates" only becuase our otherwise legal technology is inconvenient for media conglomerates and proprietary software barons?

Re:Promising

[L7_]

The reason people are labeled "pirates" in this case is that they are not paying the commercial patent fees that are due to the various patent groups that own the media compression algorithms.

Whats crazy is that how the MPEG4 standards work is open and understood, yet implementations are patent encumbered. Thats the reason you won't find FOSS software players: they can't implement the decoding process since it involves using the decompression algorithms.

So I don't think that "pirate" is the correct term, since no copyright is being violated. The developers that write and distribte the software should be labeled "non-patent royalty paying software writer" while those that use it should be labeled "bad people" (or whatever, but not pirates) since they are buying software from a developer that implemented patents without paying for them.

I would say this is more analagous to a band covering a song and distributing the cover rather than someone copying the original band's song and distributing that.

Re:Promising

[HeghmoH]

Whats crazy is that how the MPEG4 standards work is open and understood, yet implementations are patent encumbered.

Why is this "crazy"? The entire point of the patent system is that you are required to disclose your methods in exchange for a limited monopoly on their use. A patented standard is necessarily going to be open for all to see, simply not for all to use.

Re:Promising

[evilviper]

will we be able to watch our favourite movies legally using our favourite, free software in the future?

What would make you think that would be a possibility in the future, when it isn't even the case today?

None of the Unix MPEG-2 players are licensed, and you can bet that the CSS decryption is of questionable legality as well.

Does *anyone* want Windows Media anyway?

[byolinux]

Ballmer and co just don't seem to *get* media, in my opinion.

Now I'd like a fair deal for musicians and consumers, and right now iTunes is the market leader. Why? I think Apple seems to "get it" a lot more than other companies do.

From what I've seen of Windows Media and DRM, it's not clever, and worse yet, it's clumsy.

Does Microsoft have to own everything? Why don't they just play nice for once and use something vaguely standard, like MPEG 4 and AAC, or FLAC.

Theora promises to be really nice, but until then can anyone point me in the direction of a decent, free software, video codec (ideally with some nice Creative Commons tie in and even better, something I can give to my Mac using video encoders)

Re:Does *anyone* want Windows Media anyway?

[Sentry21]

I think Apple seems to "get it" a lot more than other companies do.

I don't even think it's that Apple 'gets it' more than other companies, though that certainly is the case. I think it's more a matter of Apple's attitude towards the rest of the world.

Most companies do software development (and, for that matter, most people go about their lives) in a fairly straightforward manner. Add new features every release, needed or not, change things in whatever way their biggest clients want (or think they want), and try to make everybody happy (or in Microsoft's case, equally frustrated). Try not to step on anyone's toes.

Apple has a different philosophy. They decide how it's going to be, and that's the end of it. Period. You want a Mac? You get OS X. You want to run OS X? You need our hardware. You want digital music? You use iTunes and the iPod. You want to sell your music on iTunes? This is what it costs.

Apple does not give in. Marketshare or not, they have enough capital that they can pretty much dictate how it's going to be, and if you don't like it, go buy someone else's computer and use someone else's software. If you don't want what they're offering, then it's no skin off their teeth.

Apple 'gets it', make no mistake, but a lot of other people 'get it' too. I'm sure Microsoft 'gets it' in some respects, they just don't care. The difference is that Apple has the calzones to dictate terms to literally everyone they deal with - so if they decide that it's better for the consumer to be able to do X with Y, then that is how it will be, and if people don't like it, I'm sure someone somewhere in Cupertino is paid well to sit in a beautiful office and shed a tear for each of them in turn.

Microsoft, on the other hand, tries to be all things to all people, and screw the whole world equally. It lies to the SMPTE, it lies to developers, it lies to the public, and it lies to pretty much everyone else, in order to make everyone happy until the contract is signed, knowing full well that it may piss everyone off, but what can you do once the ink is dry?

To summarize: Apple does the right thing up front. Microsoft does the wrong thing behind your back.

--Dan

Thank God

[marktaw.com]

In short, industry players that have embraced VC-1 fear they may have to go back to Microsoft and pony up fees for a WMVx license in the future.

Thank god someone finally recognized MS's licensing scheme for what it is: highway robbery. Basing a standard on it is a sure way to strangle an industry.

Why on earth would anyone use WMV or WMA?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first and only time I ever downloaded anything in these formats, I was redirected to some M$ site upon opening the file, stating that no more than 10 people could use it (!) I was like WTF! Ever since then, I will never EVER use WMVs or WMAs. No thanks, I'll stick with less obscure formats that don't try to put in copy-protection crap.

Re:Surprising?

[geg81]

Microsoft used shark-style tactics using his monopolistic power to get what it wanted and crush opposition... film at 11. Is this even news?

No, that's not news. What's news is that an important industry standards body noticed in time and is trying to prevent it.

Microsoft overpromised it seems, at least on the feature set. But cheated and lied?

I think if you "overpromise" in order to gain business advantages worth billions of dollars, that counts as "cheated and lied". In fact, it might count as "fraud".

Maybe we have gotten a little too jaded in this industry, but this kind of behavior should not be acceptable.

Re:Open disk

[geg81]

Are there any open standards (Dirac maybe?) that are at an advanced enough stage of development to be used as an alternative?

You've got to be kidding--the last thing the SMTPE and the motion picture industry wants is an open standard. They want something that is heavily patented because that gives them control. They just want the patent holders to be companies that can be pushed around by the content providers.

The ideal standard for the SMTPE would be something that is heavily patented, where the patents are held by labs and companies too small to make a business out of their own inventions, small companies that are happy with scraps and handouts from the motion picture industry.

Microsoft vs. Apple: Two Warring Views of Media

[Nova Express]

This is rather emblamatic of the differences between the way Apple and Microsoft approach any technical problem.

Apple asks: "How can we make the best product possible for the customer and still make money at it?"

Microsoft asks: "How can we use this to reinforce our monopoly and still get end-users to swallow it?"

All Microsoft's DRM and Codec schemes have seemed to design to "embrace and extend" to further their Windows monopoly. Apple's have been designed to be the best they possibly can, with just enough DRM to satisfy their media partners. It's a big difference, and it shows up in everything they do.

Preserving our culture?

[MisterP]

TV, movies and music make up a large part of our culture and here we have a corporation trying to railroad a standards commitee into accepting their product as the standard we will use preserve the sounds and images of our generation. That sounds pretty dorky, but it's true.

This makes with the BBC and Vorbis guys are doing seem a lot more important.

Re:Funny Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Or politicians.

You don't snowjob politicians, you buy them.

Apparently, a highly technical standard body is ha

[JessLeah]

Apparently, a highly technical standard body is harder to snowjob than the usual clueless consumers.

For the moment. The bar for what is considered "highly technical" is lowered all the time. Consider the following:

1) I've met people with Master's Degrees in CompSci who are clueless about coding. Maybe this "has been the case for a while", but surely it hasn't consistently been the case since the birth of CS as a discipline?
2) 20 years ago, I would have been a mediocre Unix SA... today, I'm practically deified by 90% of so-called SAs.

There will always be a few amazing brainiac engineer-types, and a few hard-theory CS geniuses (a la Knuth), and a few master hackers who can code x86, PPC, SPARC, and z80 assembly in their sleep... but their percentages among society will get smaller and smaller. Within 50 years, expect (e.g.) the IEEE, or the ACM, or whatever, to have devolved into organizations no more technical or consumer-minded than the RIAA or MPAA...

Re:Apparently, a highly technical standard body is

[be-fan]

With regards to (1), that's not really surprising. Computer science isn't really about coding at all, it's about computational science. You can be a great computer scientist while being a mediocre programmer.

Re:Wrong: VC-1 does not include DRM!

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are on topic speaking of codec, I think the intent of parent poster was to take into consideration other things besides codec that factor into a "best product" (such as service, price, hardware, etc.).

Pirate

[Pan T. Hose]

So I don't think that "pirate" is the correct term, since no copyright is being violated.

Actually, "pirate" is not the correct term indeed, but because piracy is not being commited. A pirate is someone who robs or plunders at sea without a commission from a recognized sovereign nation, not someone who violate the copyright law. Acts of the former are called piracy. Acts of the latter are called copyright infringement.

Re:Missing something here...

[Anita Coney]

You're forgetting two things: First the DVD could only be played on PCs AND second, the PC had to be very high end to play it.

Sticking a file on a DVD and getting it to play on a high end system is hardly demonstrating anything. Getting it to work on a cheap appliance is yet another.

Definition:

[Anonymous Coward]

A world that produces nothing has no "industry".

Count the bias

[bonch]

"Redmond beast"
"cheated and lied"
"usual clueless customers"

How did Microsoft cheat and lie about anything? It claimed its codec was the best? Surprise, a company thinks its products are the best. Slashdot thinks Linux is the best. Does that mean it "cheated and lied" if it turns out Windows does something better? Come on.

Re:Open disk

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is the consumer electronics manufacturers like Sony that would actually build the hardware, and they want the standard to be as open possible so they will not be under the thumb of either the media industries or Microsoft.

I am guessing that it is for this reason that Microsoft's standard is being stalled, instead of Microsoft ramming it though as it usually does.

Re:Surprising?

[Wylfing]

This is how Microsoft Bill Gates built his business...Bill Gates seemed quite proud of those feats when he later bragged about them.

This isn't too uncommon in the consulting and business services world, where you see these kinds of deal-makers brought in for the purpose of getting a new company off the ground. These guys will say or do anything to close a deal. A real classic is hiring temps so it looks like you have a staff and a genuine address. Telling someone you've got a product today when it's never even been designed is almost SOP. Ethical? No. Commonplace? Yes. And these deal-makers always like to brag over a few fingers of Johnnie Walker Black how they bamboozled the new client into signing on the dotted line.