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Money For Nothing and the Codecs For Free

Posted by timothy on from the wrapper-inside-a-riddle-inside-a-framework-inside-an-enigma dept.

Davis Freeberg writes "In an in depth discussion on the codec industry, CoreCodec CEO and Matroska Foundation board member Dan Marlin shares his thoughts on the growing popularity of the MKV container, confusion in the marketplace between X.264/MKV and DivXHD and weighs in on a controversial decision by Microsoft to block third party filter support in future versions of Windows media player. His interview offers a behind the scenes look at an important piece of technology that is helping to power the P2P movement. It also raises the prickly question of whether or not Microsoft is abusing their OS monopoly, in order to rein in competition within the codec industry."

3 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. That ain't working - That's the way you do it by snarfies · · Score: 4, Funny

    I want my... I want my... I want my .mkv...

    1. Re:That ain't working - That's the way you do it by oodaloop · · Score: 4, Funny

      Indeed, it does sound like they are in dire straights.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  2. You are kidding arent you ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are you saying that this mkv can run on a computer without DVD underneath it, at all ? As in, without a video disk, without any purchasing, and without any ownership ?

    That sounds preposterous to me.

    If it were true (and I doubt it), then companies would be selling mkv without a DVD. This clearly is not happening, so there must be some error in your calculations. I hope you realise that DVD is more than just plastic ? Its a whole system that runs the video from start to finish, and that is a very difficult thing to acheive. A lot of people dont realise this.

    Sony just spent $9 billion and many years to create Blu-Ray, so it does not sound reasonable that some new alternative could just snap into existence overnight like that. It would take billions of dollars and a massive effort to achieve. Toshiba tried, and spent a huge amount of money developing HD-DVD but could never keep up with Blu-Ray. ArVid tried to create their own system for years, but finally gave up recently and moved to DVD and Blu-Ray.

    Its just not possible that a freeware like the mkv could be extended to the point where it runs the entire video fron start to finish, without using some of the more critical parts of DVD. Not possible.

    I think you need to re-examine your assumptions.