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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."
I am shocked. Shocked and dismayed. Microsoft lied? My world is falling apart.
Team Microsoft, fuck yeah!
Finally finished and somewhat appropriate to post it here. Again, my apologies to the ones who wrote the original work...and no need to be upset y'all, it's supposed to be funny.
(chorus sung by DiiDdo of band Yank'n Grope)
My fee's all gone, I'm wondering why
I sold my soul at all --
The morning mail locked up my Windows,
They all call me a troll.
Even if they don't, everything I say
Gets all hackers' eyes to roll --
Still I tell me that it's not so bad,
It's not so bad...
Dear Bill, I wrote but you still ain't respondin'
I left e-mail, my URL, and my home IP at the bottom
I sent two bug reports last autumn -- you must not a got 'em
There probably was a problem with hotmail or somethin
Sometimes the packets take the scenic route when you route them
but anyhoo, fsck it, what's been up? Man, how's Ballmer?
Is he still a dancin' foo, screamin' "developer?"
If I have a daughter, guess what I'ma call her --
I'ma name her Clippy.
I read about your XP SP2, I'm sorry.
I had a friend bork his box over some bitchy driver problem
I know you probably hear this everyday but I'm your biggest fan.
I even got Software Assurance that the zealots called a scam.
I got a room will all your certificates and manuals, man.
I like the stuff you did with Java, too, that stuff was phat!
Anyways, I hope you get this, man. Hit me back
just to chat, truly yours, your biggest fan
This is Dan.
Dear Bill, you still ain't ack-ed my note. I hope you have a chance.
I ain't mad -- I just think it's fscked up when the shizznit hit the fan.
If you didn't want to fix the bugs through Trustworthy Computing
you didn't have to, but you coulda posted a work-around for Matthew
That's my kid bro, man, he's only eight years old
Been a good boy, rebooted as he was told by you
for years and you just said "No."
That's pretty crappy, man, his drive was going idle.
He wanted to be just like you, man! Now he gets more porn than I do!
I ain't that mad, though, I just don't like bein lied to.
Remember when we met in Vegas? I said that I'd write you
And that I've always gots your back. See, man, patching is ok, in a way.
I wouldn't have bothered either
But my mom's machine got hosed and she's not a control-alt-deleter.
I can't relate when people say you're doing wrong
So when I have a crappy day, I flame away and bring it on
'cause I don't really know shit else and get confused on what to press
I even got wit blizzard and got Warcraft Battlechest
Sometimes I get a troll to axe a seal to watch it bleed
It's like adrenaline, that is until the game locks up on me.
And when you rolled right over Real, man, I respect you cause you did it.
The linux folks are jealous -- their uptime is 24/7
but they don't know you like I do, Bill, no one does
they don't know what it's like for systems like ours booting up
You gotta write me, man. I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose.
Sincerely yours, Dan -- P.S.
I'm glad you beat up OS/2
Dear Mister-I'm-Too-Good-To-Fix-Or-Patch-My-Bugs,
this 'll be the last e-mail I ever send your ass
It's been so long and Word's still bork -- I don't deserve it?
I gotta upgrade to write letters?
I almost switched down to Wordperfect!
So this is my ogg file I'm sending you, I hope you hear it.
I'm running firefox on the information superhighway
Hey Bill, I clicked on Bonzi Buddy, will it install in my drive?
You know that song by Shawn Colvin, it's called "Sunny Came Home"
about that girl who came home with a box of tools and said that
it's time for a few small repairs -- she came home with a vengeance?
That's kinda how it is, I was one "rescue disk" from switching
Now it's too late -- I'm with a million penguins now and happy
and all I wanted was a lousy ack or a call
I hope you know I trashed ALL of your cd's from my drawer.
I loved XP and IE together, think about it --
It's ruined somehow, I hope you can'
Is MPEG 4 an open standard? Are there any open standards (Dirac maybe?) that are at an advanced enough stage of development to be used as an alternative?
A company the size of MS that cannot write a decent test suite. Incompetence or the need to keep the proposed standard as obscure as possible to stifle competition... or both?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
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?
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.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
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?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Microsoft used shark-style tactics using his monopolistic power to get what it wanted and crush opposition... film at 11. Is this even news?
And if you RTFA, you'll see that "On the assumption that WMV9 was destined to become an industry standard, Microsoft convinced both the Blu-ray Disc Association and the DVD Forum to include it as a mandatory video compression format (along with MPEG-2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) for next-generation high-definition DVD formats. Now, there is speculation that delays or licensing problems for VC-1 could prompt either -- or both -- of the DVD industry groups to simply delete the Microsoft technology from their specifications."
So it's not like WMV9 was the only codec incorporated in the standard anyway. Microsoft overpromised it seems, at least on the feature set. But cheated and lied?
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
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)
Join the Free Software Foundation
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.
We were going to do a streaming media demo over a wireless data link. They said it would be no problem. (Codec choice was out of my hands, but I had to write the client) I wanted to know how we were going to get data from our custom wireless data decoder into Windows Media Player. Their answer? Wireless client -> Windows Media Codec -> Windows Media Server -> Windows Media Player. All on seperate computers, all running Server 2000. Our final solution? Wireless client -> File. Open file in Media Player. Same computer. Done. From my perspective marketing drives Windows Media, not good technology.
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.
If WM9 can't even compete with MPEG4 LC, which is relatively established now, it will get eaten alive by AVC/H.264, not that MPEG-LA help themselves by encumbering a promising technology with patent and royalty complexities, by the time they get a satisfactory resolution they hand people like MS time to bribe and cajole a less worthy codec onto hapless consumers, and eventually studios of course.
MS is like my dog, who I've nick-named monopoly, he was promisng to start with then he jumps up to bite me in the ass given any excuse. He eats all the food out there and demands more resources, not to mention his lack of standards cause bad conflictions with other four legged beasts (such as the beast).
Apparently, a highly technical standard body is harder to snowjob than the usual clueless consumers.
Or politicians.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
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.
There's a reason my entire movie library (ripped from owned DVD's which are stored away -- just like my CD collection now :) ... has the .MP4 extension at this time. There's also a reason that the entire library resides on Linux partitions and was created using a Mac. Microsoft has enough money. They get $0 now.
Yes. Yes it is. The story has always been interjected with this crap, and will always be interjected with this crap. The story is just structured that way.
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...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Last month I saw WMV9 covered in the only 2 microsoft booths at the IBC conference(amsterdam).
Microsoft really made me believe that wmv9 was mature enough to be an industry standard.
Was I assimilated by microsoft or is wmv9 not that bad at all?
This just shows how little you actually know about this subject. VC-1 is a compression standard only. It does not include DRM features, or any user-interaction features for that matter. This is very clear if you have been following this standardization process at all.
Oh, and by the way, what Apple codecs are you referring to that have been designed to be so superior to WMV9? Please tell. (And don't say "Quicktime" because that is a format, not a codec.)
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I didn't RTFA but, if I remember correctly, the OP has some major misinformation in his post.
It was my impression that WMV9 was approved by the HD DVD groups to be supported in ADDITION to the MPEG4 codec. It didn't REPLACE the MPEG4 codec.
Misinformation on Slashdot -- who'd-a-thought?
Look at this link to see the performance differences between some codecs. I hope it is just the quicktime implimentation of mpeg4 that is crappy. What about Divx?
MPEG 4 was based in part on some of Apple's "native Quicktime" codecs/formats IIRC.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
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.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
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.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Well if the nerdy geniuses would repoduce more than the average person, instead of less, things would be different.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
It'd be nice if they gave Theora a shot. It looks like a lot of work has to go into preparing Microsoft's codec -- why not work on one that has no licensing problems at all, if you have to do that? The code is available now, which is more than you can say for this alternative.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
That is a very good point and that is precisely what makes me so concered. We haven't seen any patent attacks on Linux and free software yet, but as soon as Microsoft starts losing enough customers and money to Linux, we will see them.
After all, they are not fools investing literally millions in their "defensive" patent porfolios. Just look at IBM. They only use their patents "defensively." But what does it mean? When SCO sued them, they instantly countersued with tens of patents. SCO being wrong suing IBM in the first place is irrelevant. They could do the same thing against almost anyone because everyone violates some of the bogus and obvious patents thay have. The point is that they have the power to do so. So does Microsoft. They have the power to attack if they need it. And that's very dangerous.
And I am only talking about bogus patents right now, which in the case of Linux might cost anyone too much bad publicity or make the patents invalidated with the help of EFF, FSF or OSI, and only hurt the attacker in the long run. The very specific patents for modern audio and video codecs, and violating them to do exactly what they were designed for, is a completely different matter. They most probably wouldn't get invalidated in court. They will be a powerful weapon even for getting good publicity--"Linux was working only because those pirates stole our patented algorithms, without them it can't even play a movie, you should use Windows."
You're right, we don't have today what I fear we won't have in the future. It is not possible to legally play an original, purchased DVD on Linux. Would you believe that I still don't have a DVD drive because of that?
This is something which we have to address before it starts to be a problem. Because using patented algorithms in free software only makes the software vulnerable to legal attacks, and this is the only kind of attack that can be directed against free software. Most of people don't care about them because we haven't seen any attacks yet. Yet.
By the way, thanks for posting a very good comment in the Free Software Friendly Graphics Card discussion. When I was criticising the lack of support for that project and the lack of understanding why is it so important, I hadn't read you post, because I gave up after reading the top half of +5 comments which was basically saying "bad idea" which I quite honestly couldn't understand.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."