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Graphics Software

More on MPEG4 250

Posted by michael from the got-ogg? dept.
ratajik writes: "Salon is running a story about how MPEG-LA (the alliance of companies in charge of licensing MPEG4) are planning on charging .25 cents for each copy they sell, and a .02 cent an hour "use fee" for anyone viewing MPEG4. They have a interesting slant on how this will make open-source alternatives much more attractive, and will likely kill off use of the MPEG4 standard in the long run."
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More on MPEG4 More

More on MPEG4

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  • free porn in high resolution. :(

  • Who is buying this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by catwh0re ( 540371 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @03:47AM (#3123444)
    I don't know about you, but everything that I find to be popular is popular because it is either free, or easy to pirate (free). I'd rather buy a DVD than pay for some software copy of it.

    • As often happens, MPEG-4 will undoubtedly be widely adopted for standardisation reasons alone. Unfortunately this fact can't be changed, so we all have to look at the pros and cons of this format and compensate accordingly.

      The MPEG-4 video compression algorithm employs two base techniques: block-based motion compensation for reduction of temporal redundancy, and transform-domain, or DCT, coding for reduction of spatial-redundancy. The motion compensation technique is applied both in the forward (causal) and backward (non-causal) direction. The remaining signal (prediction error) is coded using the transform based technique. The motion predictors, or motion vectors, are transmitted together with the spatial information.

      There are several problems with the motion vector implementation in MPEG-4, which could lead to less than optimal compression/quality ratios, but overall the new features included in the MPEG-4 format itself compensate for this loss somewhat, or at least, that's what the MPEG proponents hope. A lot of people will have no choice but to use the format, but if enough companies break away from it, it could lead to a situation where the acceptance threshold is reached for competing format.

      Should be interesting times ahead.
      • I think you're speaking of just the initial Simple Visual Profile. MPEG-4 is extremely extensible, and we can expect new profiles to be added with new video codecs.

        Today, MPEG-4 also includes Advanced Simple, with global motion compensation and some other features.

        Also, H.26L is around the corner, and should be in some new MPEG-4 profiles in 2003. This codec includes a whole smorgasboard of new compression techniques, very competitive with the best propritary codecs.

        Remember, MPEG-4 isn't a codec, any more than Linux is a web server.

    • Re:Who is buying this? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bi()hazard ( 323405 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @05:36AM (#3123612) Homepage Journal
      One would wonder what the MPEG-4 people are thinking. This plan will obviously fail; how could high powered executives be so foolish? Have they been blinded by greed? Are they really that arrogant?

      The answer is no. They are foolish like foxen: (a la boxen, if you people can use boxen as the plural of box then more than one fox is foxen, more than one sex is sexen, and a boxed set of lexx episodes is lexxen. Also, multiples of the often symbolic letter x are xen, which is pronounced like zen. Triple x-that is xxx-is therefore zen. Intriguing.) by coming out with outrageous terms now they hope to shock the market and take a highball negotiating position. MPEG-4 has enough support and technology to be the default choice. If they choose to compromise-sacrificing the time fees in exchange for acceptance of more legitimate fees, they win the negotiation now and prepare the playing field for future outrages. This ploy will be likely to work every time if it works once. Furthermore, smaller, more premium services will have greater freedom to choose per use and per hour fees if the big players take them seriously. The executives on MPEG-4 are not impartial: they serve other corporate masters. They are acting in the interests of their respective companies. They know MPEG-4 will become dominant after a negotiating process, so they feel secure in manipulating the situation to allow their own companies to bring up similar licensing terms and be taken seriously.

      Do not underestimate the corporate elite. They gained their positions through long careers of stiff competition, rampant deception and hidden agendae, and ubiquitous backstabbing. These are masters of bs, people far more comfortable telling carefully crafted lies than the truth. They want to be underestimated. They want to provoke you. They are trolling to destabilize the market and create an opportunity to shift norms in their favor. And as long as the majority continues to use their products in the end, they will be successful.

  • "So if you were playing a game of online Doom III that made use of MPEG-4 "

    Or maybe use MPEG-4 for defragging!

    Obviously the writer knows nothing about Doom3.

    • RoQ (Score:2)

      by CaseyB ( 1105 )
      It's not that off base. Quake 3 uses motion video cutscenes. And it's certainly conceivable that Doom 3 could use a video compression format for in-game animated textures.

      Q3 uses a format called RoQ [monash.edu.au], which I guess was developed in-house at id. Some weekend project for Carmack, I suppose. "Hmm. Next item on my to-do list, 'develop video codec from scratch'."

  • I have been working with a company that provides turn-key encoding solutions and the licensing issues with MPEG 4 are what has been delaying the next release of Quickimte (for those of us who like to watch trailers on Apple's Trailer site [apple.com])

  • And how are they supposed to measure this? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kymermosst ( 33885 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @03:54AM (#3123455) Journal
    How the hell are they going to measure "viewing time"? What if I sneeze and briefly aren't looking at the video, do they charge me for that?

    Buncha bullcrap. I'm tired of this crap that tries to wring money out of you for time spent doing something. Subscription software, pay-per-minute viewing/listening, and the like.

    What next, the state is going to charge me for every minute I'm on the freeway?

    I've got an idea. Let's make a computer that charges me $.02/minute for as long as I'm sitting in front of it.

    I just wish more people would get sick of this crap, and write their congressman as I have done. There are too many idiots out there who just miss everything as it goes on by.

    I bet they care when they get thier first bill for per-minute charges of movie viewing. By then, it'll be too late.

    • Re:And how are they supposed to measure this? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @04:06AM (#3123479) Journal
      What next, the state is going to charge me for every minute I'm on the freeway?

      They already do. It's called "Gas tax" and is applied in most jurisdictions. Since you use a certain amount of gas per hour, and the size of the vehicle (roughly) determines how much gas you burn, you, in essence, pay a "pound per mile" price for driving down the highway.

      Here in California, where gas prices are around $1.25 per gallon, over 1/2 of that cost is in the form of various taxes and fees.

      I understand that ratio is considerably higher still in Europe.

      • Re:And how are they supposed to measure this? (Score:4, Informative)

        by psavo ( 162634 ) <psavo@iki.fi> on Thursday March 07, 2002 @04:30AM (#3123513) Homepage
        Better still. At least in Finland we have this thing called 'tv-license'. If you don't own one, you're not (legally) allowed to listen to the radio or watch TV (in your own appartment, casual hearing is *OK*).
        This license is pretty hefty, but it funds 'state's tv station', which shows some very good programs, so I'm personally OK with that.
        Of course we have ad-funded (did I mention that states tv-channel doesn't have ads?) channels too.
        • TV/radio licenses are actually quite popular all over europe. I know for a fact that they're in place in the UK as well and Poland.

          Actually, this pisses me off. Polish state-run television is really shitty, I rarely watch it at all. It's heavily commercial, low quality programming that I just don't watch. Not only is it an unfair (non-use) tax but I have real problems with the fact that I have to support a commercial entity. A commercial, government subsidizied entity that competes for commercial time with private commercial tv stations, which cuts into their budgets.

          The one european country that has 'good' laws concerning TV licenses is Germany, I belive that they use the money to pay private SAT channels to not scramble their programs, thus letting people all over europe watch German-language programming.
        • Well you know something... As we are driving down our streets, we are constantly bombarded with billboards, signs, and ads of every sort.

          If our streets were ad-free, I wouldn't mind the insanely high taxes.

          Now if we could get rid of the burocracy that needs 20 people to seal an envelope, then taxes will drop to fair levels.

          Of course, in defense of our gov. you may legally use the roads even if your car runs on non-petrol. fuel.
          • Well you know something... As we are driving down our streets, we are constantly bombarded with billboards, signs, and ads of every sort.

            If our streets were ad-free, I wouldn't mind the insanely high taxes.

            Um...it's not that I particularly care for billboards (if I did, why would I have a page on my website about blocking ads?), but nearly all billboards I've run across have been on private property. I don't see how gas taxes and billboards are related in any way.

            Besides, while you can't "filter" billboards, at least they're easier to ignore than "punch-the-monkey" or "evidence-eliminator" banner ads...

          • Yes, we may have ads along our road ways, but they don't require user intervention to be avoided.

            I have to close a popup window ad.

            I DON'T have to drive around ads placed in the middle of the road on my way to work. (that would suck!)

      • Ahh, BUT the car's gas mileage is BETTER on freeways than it is on city streets, and in fact, when idling in a traffic jam because the state did not keep their end of the bargain uses a LOT less gas.

        Gas tax is more associated with "mileage" as opposed to "time." It even works out with your math, "you use a certain amount of gas per hour, and the size of the vehicle (roughly) determines how much gas you burn", making it fair for larger vehicles which use more gas putting their extra weight per mile.

        If they charged for "time", then it would cost loads more. I am okay with paying for actual use, which is mileage driven on the surface of the road, which is covered by the gas tax. If my car is stopped, either by me, or by the fault of the state not adequately designing the road, there is no way I should have to pay it.

        I can also support normal mileage-based toll roads for the same way... they are charging for miles driven on the road, not time spent.

        Just imagine if they checked the time your car entered the freeway, and then when you got off, two hours later, they charged you for two hours of road use. Sounds okay? Okay, what if that trip, at legal speeds, only should have taken 30 minutes, but the freeway was backed up due to an accident or something?

        I bet you'd be so friggin pissed off.

        Now, how that relates to the article is, if they charged you for "viewing time", and you say... took a piss during the MPEG-4 movie you were watching, do they refund you? Or do they charge? What if you fall asleep? How do they measure whether you were actually *viewing*?
      • True, they do charge you the gas tax, but look at it this way at least you are getting something worthwile out of it. Most of the road building/devolepment/maintence is paid for by the gas tax (at least in nebraska); the rest is other taxes/federal funds.

        With the mpeg-4 scheme all you are paying for is some rich CEO to get richer.
    • What next, the state is going to charge me for every minute I'm on the freeway?

      Actually, yes. [slashdot.org]

      <cue Twilight Zone theme>
    • If QoS is implemented in MPEG4, then it should be fairly easy to discover at the ISP and content server level how many bits you've downloaded, and charge you per bit...

      It's up to the software to provide you with rewind and disc storage capability ;)

    • Pay-per-view, pay-per-use, micropayments, etc. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Shiny Metal S. ( 544229 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @05:49AM (#3123624) Homepage
      Buncha bullcrap. I'm tired of this crap that tries to wring money out of you for time spent doing something. Subscription software, pay-per-minute viewing/listening, and the like.
      This pay-per-view crap won't work, for the same reason as other micropayment ideas. See The Case Against Micropayments [openp2p.com], my emphasis:
      (...)

      Micropayment systems have not failed because of poor implementation; they have failed because they are a bad idea. Furthermore, since their weakness is systemic, they will continue to fail in the future.

      Proponents of micropayments often argue that the real world demonstrates user acceptance: Micropayments are used in a number of household utilities such as electricity, gas, and most germanely telecom services like long distance.

      These arguments run aground on the historical record. There have been a number of attempts to implement micropayments, and they have not caught on in even in a modest fashion - a partial list of floundering or failed systems includes FirstVirtual, Cybercoin, Millicent, Digicash, Internet Dollar, Pay2See, MicroMint and Cybercent. If there was going to be broad user support, we would have seen some glimmer of it by now.

      Furthermore, businesses like the gas company and the phone company that use micropayments offline share one characteristic: They are all monopolies or cartels. In situations where there is real competition, providers are usually forced to drop "pay as you go" schemes in response to user preference, because if they don't, anyone who can offer flat-rate pricing becomes the market leader. (See sidebar: "Simplicity in pricing.")

      Why have micropayments failed? There's a short answer and a long one. The short answer captures micropayment's fatal weakness; the long one just provides additional detail.

      The Short Answer for Why Micropayments Fail

      Users hate them.

      (...)

      Read the rest [openp2p.com] of this article, very good stuff. I won't ever use pay-per-view and any other micropayments. For the same reason as I prefer a flat fee for my DSL instead of pay-per-use fee for every email I send or every website I visit, etc.
      • That's just wrong i'm afraid: I can think of at least one wildly succesful implementation of micropayments which is pay-as-you-go mobile phones in the UK.

        Before pay-as-you-go all phones were contract based, ie flat rate (with small additional charges if you go over the limit). However this charging model didn't suit many people who would only use their phones occasionally, or wanted to keep a close eye on their expenses so the payg scheme was introduced. You can buy top up vouchers from shops and post offices, and then your phone shows you how much money you have in your account.

        It's effectively a micropayment system, and it's in use by millions in this country every day.

        Anyway, your assertion that micropayments didn't take off because there are a lot of commercial, proprietary implementations that didn't work is also rubbish - all that means is that those systems weren't up to the job.

        You also neglect the fact that even in places where the utility companies aren't monopolies, micropayments are still the default
      • Furthermore, businesses like the gas company and the phone company that use micropayments offline share one characteristic: They are all monopolies or cartels. In situations where there is real competition, providers are usually forced to drop "pay as you go" schemes in response to user preference, because if they don't, anyone who can offer flat-rate pricing becomes the market leader. (See sidebar: "Simplicity in pricing.")

        When gas, electric and water companies began, they were in most cases launched as publicly-owned monopolies. But the continued acceptance of their use of micropayment today is not only because they're monopolies, but also because a lot of politicians (and even some consumers) realise that people will make unlimited use of a finte resource, if it's charged at flat-rate. OTOH, most people will conserve electricity / water / gas if it saves them money to do so.

        When phone companies' backbone capacity shot up a few years ago following changes in technology, they began to move (or were pressured/forced by regulators to move) to flat-rate charging for some services, since there was no longer a pressing economic need to moderate usage.

        But the finite-resource argument does not apply with micropayment for services like the ones you mentioned above (FirstVirtual, Millicent etc.), and certainly does NOT apply to movies and music from a local CD. It's important to moderate the use of finite physical resources, but not of infinite resources like idea playback or entertainment playback. That's just naked, stupid greed.
      • Users hate the implementations so far, only because manipulation from power mongering fucks (PMFs) such as those you appologize for.

        Lack of support (or implicit discreditation if you prefer) from banks and governments for micro-payments means the necessary confidence from consumers and businesses to accept them is missing.

        Paying someone 5 cents is only attractive if you already have an account. Your privilege of giving someone a 5 cent tip is not sufficient motivation to get an account. You need some assurance that your micropayment provider won't skip to the bahamas with your 25 cents in the account, or result in fraud against you.

        There is an exception: Paypal. It achieved acceptance through deep pockets, and providiing legitimate consumer need. Since its inception, piggybacking other transactions than ebay, becomes more attractive since the users already have accounts.

        Micropayments provide genuine value... its simply not value the banks are willing to compromise their core business for. Retards such as yourself necessarily pop up to appologize for them.
      • I think the problem with micro payments is that the implementors want to charge for every action you take. Every page view costs $.02, for example.

        If you're being billed like this you're a lot less likely to view much, because at every click you know you're being charged. It might not be a lot, but it cuts into the feeling of free usage.

        However, if Slashdot used micropayments you could pay a subscription fee that was smaller and more suited to the time you wanted. If I wanted to try a one-day subscription I could pay them $.10 and not waste $.40 on CC charges to do it.

        Micropayments based on charging for every click will never take off. But a usable micro-payments system designed to allow tipping and small payments might really go somewhere.

        www.fileplanet.com has a subscription service where you can pay money to have access to special download servers, where the unwashed masses have to wait in queue for their downloads. Bleh, I'd never subscribe, if I did and didn't download anything from them I'd feel it was wasted.

        But, if they had a "skip to the head of the line for $.10" button I'd pay most of the time.

        Payments need to be applied in a user-friendly way, not in the way that'll generate the most revenue. Otherwise you won't have any customers and you'll make nothing. Enlightened self interest.
    • Every time something "bad" happens, people want more laws and more regulation. If you haven't seen by now, laws and regulations hurt guys like us, not the big guys.

      If a company wants to charge for every minute you watch TV, or go to the supermarket, or sleep in a bed, and you don't like it, STOP SUPPORTING THAT COMPANY.

      In the end, the free market works very well here. You will end up finding other forms of entertainment (probably by ignoring the mass-market crap, and finding better independently produced features). Those who like paying for the product will do so if they feel it isn't more expensive than they are willing to pay.

      I can't believe people holler about calling their representatives. The 9th and 10th amendment prohibit federal government from getting involved in these situations anyway.

      The only thing I call my Congressional reps and Senators for is to REPEAL laws that "help the consumer" like a law this guy wants made.

  • Reactions from Xiph (Score:3, Funny)

    by tangent3 ( 449222 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @03:59AM (#3123465)
    Aren't these people cute? This is the log from yesterday's irc chat when they were discussing the article, irc.openprojects.net #vorbis

    [14:05:00] {Paradox} jesus
    [14:06:23] {Paradox} Hey, kids
    [14:07:33] {slothy} hey para
    [14:07:45] {Paradox} You want to see something that rocks?
    [14:07:50] {slothy} absolutely
    [14:07:52] {Paradox} http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/03/06/mpeg/ index.html
    [14:09:10] {slothy} oh wow, this is great
    [14:09:27] {Paradox} Jesus Christ, I nailed that one.
    [14:10:17] {Paradox} I even got the last word in on the article.
    [14:11:13] {Paradox} This is exactly the article I wanted to see written.
    [14:17:58] {nemo} Paradox: the article seems to imply/assume that the other codecs, even if they gain popular usage, will still be technically inferior to mpeg4 though.
    [14:18:16] {nemo} not the point of hte article, I know... but still vaguelly taints an otherwise great article
    [14:19:58] {Paradox} I like the article a lot
    [14:21:25] {nemo} I agree. it's very good
    [14:22:16] {Paradox} It gets the right message out
    [14:22:31] {Paradox} He didn't quote what I wanted him to quote, but I gave him plenty of stuff
    [14:23:24] {nemo} *nods* it's a good article. need more like it :)
    [14:26:37] {Paradox} At least it gets Xiph's name out there in the news
    [14:27:14] {xiphmont} yes
    [14:27:19] {xiphmont} agreed, a good article.
    [14:28:20] {aaronl} wow, they used ogg in Serious Sam?
    [14:32:28] {vsync} i ripped a CD to .ogg last night
    [14:32:40] {vsync} first time in quite a while
    [14:32:52] {pladask} aaronl: what? where did you hear that? :-)
    [14:33:14] {vsync} Paradox: you've inspired confidence in me :)
    [14:33:53] {Paradox} Good!
    [14:34:03] {Paradox} Confidence in me, or confidence in you?
    [14:34:15] {vsync} but this all means nothing until i _can_ actually play my files :)
    [14:34:26] {vsync} Paradox: in you guys
    [14:35:14] {Paradox} That's good to hear
    [14:36:03] {Paradox} Wow, Cube coming tomorrow, my office is clean, and a good Salon article. I'll sleep well tonight.
    [14:37:22] {jack} heh
    [14:39:53] {Paradox} I have a hair appointment tomorrow
    [14:40:07] {Paradox} at 1:45 EST
    [14:40:20] {Paradox} I don't want to go, it'll keep me apart from my new toy
    [14:40:34] {vsync} i wish i was a CEO of something and could have "hair appointments" and get interviewed
    [14:40:37] {vsync} and have an "office"
    [14:40:44] {Paradox} hah
    [14:40:53] {vsync} Paradox: you guys should hire me
    [14:40:56] {Paradox} My office is the extra bedroom in my apartment
    [14:41:06] {vsync} to write propaganda
    [14:41:09] {volsung} vsync: You just want the G4 cube... :)
    [14:41:11] {vsync} spread FUD on /. for you
    [14:41:11] {vsync} etc
    [14:41:15] {Paradox} Tell you what.. I'll give you half of my paycheck from Xiph.org this week
    [14:41:16] * Coderjoe pukes

  • What the hell are they thinking? (Score:3, Informative)

    by x136 ( 513282 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @04:01AM (#3123468) Homepage
    This won't fly. No one will buy into it. Hell, Apple has already said that they won't release Quicktime 6 until the per use fees go away. I seriously doubt Apple will be the only one to puke on the fees.
  • How about immediatly? I can't immagine anyone paying... and just how do they expect to monitor and people and figure out how many hours people are watching on their own machines?

    Anyone know how this will affect DivX, wmf, and other codecs out there that are based on mp4?

    • Re:in the long run? (Score:3, Informative)

      by tangent3 ( 449222 )
      It looks like Divx5 is released [divx.com], and DivXnetworks are resorting to implanting spyware (or charging $30 for the pro version) to offset the licensing costs. This might have some effect on the XviD (open sourced derivative of DivX) [xvid.org] though, but looks like it will go the same way as the LAME MP3 encoder, as discussed in this thread [doom9.org]
      • tihi! A link from the doom9 thread lead to this wonderful quote:


        "I'm extremely surprised that an intellect like Lawrence Lessig would be sucked in by the morons on Slashdot and its ilk," writes Len Kawell, director of e-book development for Adobe Systems (ADBE), in an e-mail.

        Yer all morons!
  • From what I recall, there was some discussion about the on2 [on2.com]'s vp# formats in terms of how free they are. As I remember, there were some limitations and restrictions on using the format (one had to do with keeping all encoders file-compatible with the standard.) and I think they charge for commercial uses of vp4 and vp5 or something....

    Does anyone with more experience analysing legalese know how VP3.2 license [vp3.com] stands up as "free/open" software?

    W
    • See post: [slashdot.org]
      Grave licensing issue with VP3. Basically, the conclusion is that the license is "proprietary with source" and in reality amounts to something similar to Microsoft's Shared Source scheme. Modifying or distributing the VP3 codec in any form is legally dubious. I agree, it's Strange that On2 Technologies tries to pass VP3 off as "Open Source" on their site [vp3.com] as it clearly doesn't meet the definition, except for that one can passively 'read' the code.

      I'd be careful with these people and wait for a real Open Source codec like Ogg Tarkin [xiph.org] to mature, or contact On2 [mailto] to get them to fix their license or, alternatively, to remove the "Open Source" references from their site.

  • I hope MPEG-4 fails (Score:5, Insightful)

    by markj02 ( 544487 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @04:05AM (#3123476)
    I agree with Ben Waggoner: MPEG-4 was designed by a large committee of industry experts and open source codecs don't have a prayer of reaching the complexity of MPEG-4. And you know what? That's a good thing.

    MPEG-4 is a complete mess. It tries to be the next generation MPEG-2, flash, speech synthesis, content management, and a lot more things all rolled into one. And MPEG-4 tries to serve too many masters: software encoders and decoders, consumer electronics devices, industrial applications, multimedia databases, and others. If MPEG-LA prices MPEG-4 out of the market, we can all sigh a collective sigh of relief because the MPEG-4 standard just sucks. MPEG-4 would be a bad idea even if there were no licensing fees.

    What we need is a simple, scalable video codec. It does not have to have any bells and whistles. All it needs to do is represent a video stream and a collection of audio streams together. It should get rid of the interlacing mess from MPEG-2, it should allow for video of different sizes, and maybe it should allow for the inclusion of user-defined synchronized byte streams, and that's about it.

    Open source video codec developers do not have to worry about low-level hardware implementability (that only matters for cut-throat pricing on devices you don't really want to use anyway; anything else can get a general-purpose processor), they don't have to worry about making DVD manufacturers happy, and they don't need to squeeze the last 50% of compression out of their format (machines and disks are cheap). There are now plenty of well-documented research techniques for audio and video compression, some even with open source implementation, that open source developers can use.

    So, no, nobody would be able to compete with MPEG-4. But what open source video codecs can deliver is a simple, reasonably efficient, scalable, easily implementable video codec. And that's a lot better than MPEG-4.

    • MPEG-4 is a complete mess. Completely true. It is too complex, too big, has too many options. It tries to be everything to everybody, and fails. It has dozens of profiles and levels, and except audio-video compression, all others are completely useless. It has profiles for transmission of facial data, 3D data, shape decoding, Structured Audio etc. All of them are extremely lowlevel and crude specially facial data transmission and 3D data transmission. To say that they will be of use in 3D games & interactive applications is a pipedream. Basically, MPEG 4 is far too complex for these things, and is definitely not enough. Further, the advances made in MPEG 4 are incremental only, and it should be not too difficult to acheive similar effects by different means.If you look at the H.263 standard, you'd know that much of Mpeg 4 is simply H.263 in disguise (specially the video part), with some frills added. Standard committes in recent times have gone completely overboard and created mammoth, unusable standards. MPEG 4, and more recently JPEG 2000 are a case in point. JPEG 2000 uses 4 times the CPU time of JPEG!. And this is despite the fact that wavelet is a O(n) transform and DCT is O(n2).And upcoming H.26l is going to take decoder complexities to completely new heights!

      • Re:I hope MPEG-4 fails (Score:4, Insightful)

        by t ( 8386 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @07:04AM (#3123737) Homepage
        As someone who works with JPEG 2000 I have to call you on your misinformation. JPEG 2000 uses wavelets. Most all image codecs to date use some kind of DCT. The software implementations for the wavelet engines is not optimized, as would be expected for a pre-standard implementation meant to show functionality.

        And also, JPEG 2000 is not a mammoth unusable standard. I've actually read the entire standard (the non-optional parts). It is small enough that a mere human can read it in a reasonable timeframe.

        Also, what software were you talking about that is 4 times slower? The JPEG2000 VM? Jasper?

        t.

    • Hip hip hooray for this. There was a great peice out a while back about creating a video API from SGI, and the lesson was, KISS. Couldn't agree more, and in this case, MPEG-4 is a pipedream. Christ, by the time they need to use facial data there'll be a far more appropriate standard.

      Give us good video, synced sound with a standard and open source format, and allow user defined synced bytestreams that won't break older players even if they don't understand the stream, and leave it at that.

      Folks like Apple should just use their patent portfolio and money to get this basic video codec out there in open source format.
    • machines and disks are cheap

      What you are forgetting that bandwidth is not so cheap, and it is the in fact the bottleneck in the digital video.
      • Bandwidth has gotten cheaper much faster than screen resolution has increased. And that means that the task of designing a video codec has gotten a lot simpler than it used to be. Whether it is "cheap" in an absolute sense is hard to say. Having several times the bandwidth a T1 connection at home for $60/month suggests to me that it has become cheap even in an absolute sense.

    • Re:I hope MPEG-4 fails (Score:5, Informative)

      by benwaggoner ( 513209 ) <ben.waggoner@mic ... t.com minus poet> on Thursday March 07, 2002 @01:31PM (#3125326) Homepage
      I'm the Ben Waggoner who was quoted in the article.

      Actually, I wasn't saying it was TOO complex. While the entire standard certainly is complex, particular implementations only use a subset of those, based on a combination of Profiles and Levels.

      The stuff most folks have been talking about, like the Simple Visual and Advanced Simple Visual used in the forthcoming QuickTime 6 and DivX 5.0 are only a really, really small part of the standard.

      MPEG-4 is a big toolbox of features that can be used to build many different solutions, potentially competing or enhancing things like Flash, Shockwave, JPEG, streaming servers, movie projectors, video cameras, etcetera.

      I view this as a real strength. Going forward anyone who needs to develop a new media tool can start with MPEG-4, instead of starting with scratch.

      A good analogy would be how GNU and Linux are now a default port to all kinds of new and strange devices and tasks, because the building blocks are all there.

      It's important that the open source community understand that building a real competitior to MPEG-4 is a task on the order of magnitude of building an OS from scratch.

      Just being able to play a rectangular movie with audio isn't even scratching the surface.

      • Just being able to play a rectangular movie with audio isn't even scratching the surface.

        Who cares? I want a good video compression format. Something that's simple, portable, free, and widely used. Telling me that I really want something else is futile because I know I don't want something else. And I suspect most people who look at MPEG-4 are in my boat. MPEG-4 just doesn't fulfill that need very well.

        Going forward anyone who needs to develop a new media tool can start with MPEG-4, instead of starting with scratch.

        Why should the do so? The MPEG-4 standard is not very good at those other things. It would be a waste of resources to try and comply with it.

        MPEG-4 is a big toolbox of features that can be used to build many different solutions

        No. MPEG-4 is a big set of descriptions and rules for how to build a toolbox. That doesn't help me get my work done faster, it makes my work more difficult.

        It's important that the open source community understand that building a real competitior to MPEG-4 is a task on the order of magnitude of building an OS from scratch.

        And my point is that the way to win is not to play the MPEG-4 game, but instead to deliver a focussed codec just for video compression. As for all the other stuff, the open source community has pretty much all the functionality already implemented that are part of MPEG-4, they are just not implemented using MPEG-4 formats and they are not integrated. And that's good as far as I'm concerned.

        I think MPEG-4 will end up like TIFF: a small subset of it is supported grudgingly by some software libraries and many devices, but the rest of the world will move on to greener pastures. TIFF could have become the default image format for the web, but its complexity and generality killed it, among other things because implementations never ended up interoperating well.

        What could catch on? Perhaps a good open source codec with an almost trivial stream format. And for people who want a more general container format and love the complexity, that stream encapsulated into Quicktime might address their needs. MPEG-4 doesn't enter into the picture.

    • I agree with Ben Waggoner...

      While your post isn't a troll, it's worth noting that Ben Waggoner is an astroturfer [stc.org]:

      Inside Windows Media, Microsoft, QUE, 1999
      Ben Waggoner, Media 100 (formerly Terran),
      conference presentations and articles

      It's entirely disreputable of him not to state his affiliation, and incredibly ignorant of Salon not to do this simple check, or ask him.
      • While your post isn't a troll, it's worth noting that Ben Waggoner is an astroturfer [stc.org]:

        Nothing could be furthor from the truth. Ben is a well known and respected figure in the world of digital video. There are few people more more qualified on the subject than he. Nor does he have any direct affiliation with Microsoft (or Apple, or Real, etc).

        In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I am a friend of his, but everything I have said is born out by the facts.

  • ...the graphic at the top of the article [salon.com] - captioned "Stop, Pay Toll, Download" - describes Salon's current offerings [salon.com] rather well, don't you think? :)
  • I'd be surprised if all this works out. Its an obvious attempt to capitalize on a good technology. I'm not saying its wrong, but it will be difficult. Since most people have broadband it seems, sites will likely stick with alternative types. I know I'm recapping what a lot of people are saying, but its another drop in the 'against' pool.
  • They could charge ya $5.00 for 1000 uses of the MP4 codec instead ;)

    Hehe ok i'm bitter.. I just paid the 5.00 Subscription and I'm proud i did... Guess I'm smokin one less pack of smokes this week. :)

  • Why is the media industry so involved in hindering technology these days?It's almost as if their plans are to create an inferior technology, do everything they can to make it the standard, and then be able to collect on it, as well as keeping their one original source the highest quality.

    Music companies may have some leverage with this because any joe blow can make an exact copy in five minutes of an audio recording, but why does the movie industry care as much?

    We already saw where they're not interested in HD-DVD or blue-ray technology because it will provide quality almost equal to film on a pirate-able source. First of all, if they're trying to keep film the highest quality source available, then they're keeping the public from accessing this quality...movies stay in theaters two months if they're lucky. Second, of all, we still haven't created a digital source that can truely compare with film (maybe Episode II was filmed completely on digital video, but I still have my doubts). It's their creations, so they do have the right to release what they want, but why release anything at all if you're just going to go to all this trouble to keep it low quality?

    All it comes down to is hindering technology for money...it's a shame it has come to this, and I think 50 years from now the industry will regret it.
    • OK, I am going to have to step in here, mainly because this got moderated up.

      We already saw where they're not interested in HD-DVD or blue-ray technology because it will provide quality almost equal to film on a pirate-able source.

      They are very interested and you better believe it. DVD was great because it was a reason for people to buy movies instead of rent them (because of all the extras) and buy movies that they already owned. I am fine with this, VCR's still work, you don't have to buy your third version of Titanic if you don't want to. (Ultra super wide screen mega special edition!). The High-Def DVD's are the same way. They will be good enough that people will want to go out and buy their movies again, maybe replacing VHS tapes that they have been holding off on. I am fine with this too, because a blue-ray disc will look SO FUCKING GOOD, and no one is making me upgrade (*cough*windows*cough*) because the technology can stand by itself. What isn't ok, is that they want to put encryption on them, just like regular DVD's have. This makes a Free implentation of a DVD player illegal, and it makes copying DVD's illegal under the DMCA. It basically makes all the things you can do with a CD, illegal. Want a video style mp3 player that rips the movie, and comresses it down? Sorry, no dice, even if the company could get around the DMCA, they would never get permission from the MPAA and get an encryption key.

      Music companies may have some leverage with this because any joe blow can make an exact copy in five minutes of an audio recording, but why does the movie industry care as much?

      Audio is much easier to handle, and some would say that we got a consumer format that was 'good enough' at the record, and then the CD, and if anyone still doesn't think so, DVDA and SACD are enough for a long while. Audio is easier to work with and doesn't take as much advancement to get very high quality. On the other hand, people want that high quality and also listen to music many time.

      Movies aren't quite the same. When people ask if I have seen A Beautiful Mind I say yes, even though it was terrible quality. I don't feel the need to go see it in the theatre anymore because I got it off of morpheus. Did I take away three movie tickets from the threatre when I sent it from my TV-out to my tv in other room and watched in on the couch with friends and popcorn? I just may have. Movies are generally payed for once, (how many movie do you go see in the threatre multiple times, or rent multiple times) and if they are pirated might not be payed for at all. On the other hand, all the CD's I have bought for a long long time have been because I heard some songs first through Mp3. I generally try to avoid buying CD's because of the Bastards at the RIAA, but if I want an album that I know I can find, and not just a song, I will go out and buy it still (although it is very rare). I rip it to .ogg and then I have a copy for my car, one for my computer, and they are both great quality.

  • Seeing that it is based on MPEG-4.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by shoemakc ( 448730 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @04:35AM (#3123529) Homepage

    It would appear that choosing the name DIVX is coming back to bite us in the ass. I objected to it from the very begining :-)

    Oh the irony...

    -Chris

  • I don't get it... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by FooBarWidget ( 556006 )
    How can they call MPEG 4 an open standard when it's heavily patented and you have to pay for it?

    • Re:I don't get it... (Score:3, Informative)

      by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

      The standard is open. If you can pay for the standard document, they will send it to you. Of course, if you choose to implement it you also need to pay for the appropriate license fees.

      This is open - opposed to some formats for which the specification is not available at any cost.

      They said it would be openly accessible; they never said it had to be free of charge, too...

    • It is called "Marketing" in the newspeak we have been brought up to use all our lives.

      Marketing is a method of increasing sales or acceptance of an idea or product through mass, repetative conditioning, indoctrination (somewhat inaccurately referred to as "brainwashing"), deceptive exaggeration or misrepresentation of the truth, and outright lies both through omission and commission.

      Calling a closed, patented codec open is of course an example of marketing through lies of commission: the deliberate telling, and repetition, of a falsehood in order to misrepresent and decieve. Although the repetative references to the product M**P4 does imply some level of repetative conditioning, and perhaps even indoctrination, has been taking place as well.

  • Watch QuickTime Live (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @05:15AM (#3123586)
    I highly advise watching the QuickTime Live presentation Phil Schiller gave about 3 weeks ago. (by the way, this is OLD news slashdot)

    Follow this URL: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/qtlive02

    Phil talks about the MPEG 4 licence, and how back-asswards really it is. Apple also posts an email address in the presentation in order for you to send mail to MPEG-LA about this issue. Please do so.

    MPEG 4 is not the best media format in the world. There will always be something better, no doubt. But we need SOME sort of free standard. Picking one is the only way to advance this type of technology. At least MPEG 4 is more or less dynamic.

    As a web / multimedia developer I am lusting for this media format to actully become legit. No more "please pick your media player" ... no more creating scripts for people that don't even know what a media player is, yada yada yada. You've heard it before right? Every media player should support mpeg 4 and users should not have to pay...period.

    We need to dump the content-for-profit fees and let this bad-boy get adopted properly. (by the way, WHO would actually be in charge of checking to see that people using mpeg 4 for profit were actully paying? Do you know how hard that would be?)

    God forbid CD's worked like web media now. everyone would need 3 different types of car stereos, or they would have to make sure they bought the right CD in the right format (if it was available in that format, and if they knew what the hell they had installed in there car or living room).

    Free standards people... it's how the web should work. HTML, HTTP, FTP, MP3 on and on and on and on.

  • If open source video is gonna work,... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SomeoneYouDontKnow ( 267893 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @05:16AM (#3123588)

    ...it will have to have a flagship app. I'm talking about a program that is so good and easy to use that it overcomes user resistence. Look at what Winamp did for MP3s. It's a great piece of software, and I'd argue that it had a lot to do with bringing MP3s to the masses.

    If an open source alternative to MPEG4 is going to catch on, it's going to have to reach that level of usability. I have a friend who's employer has thousands of hours of video that they want to digitize and make available on a subscription basis. He's going to have to choose a format soon, and he's already been using MPEG4 in-house. He wants good quality, and he wants it at a good price, but the last thing he wants to do is spend his time playing with a product that requires more work than it's worth. I like the lines from Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie's [deadtroll.com] song "Every OS Sucks" that refer to Linux.

    It's free, they say, if you can get it to run. The geeks say, "Hey, that's half the fun." Yeah, but I got a girlfriend and things to get done. The Linux OS sucks. I'm sorry to say it, but it does.

    I'm not going to go as far as to say that Linux or other open source software sucks, but I think you get the idea here. If an alternative to MPEG4 is going to get traction, it had damn well better be as easy to implement and play as MPEG4. "Free" may be a good selling point, but in a business environment, especially in a business environment with limited personnel and resources, ease of use wins out almost every time. And whichever format gets accepted first is most likely to remain entrenched, especially in places that have lots of archival footage to digitize. Once they've done a few thousand hours in one format, they aren't going to relish the prospect of having to go back and re-digitize everything again. Whoever can get a good end-to-end solution (encoder/server/player) used by enough content owners first is going to have a definite advantage.

  • $0.25 != 0.25c (Score:5, Informative)

    by PlazMatiC ( 11127 ) <slashdot AT plaz DOT net DOT nz> on Thursday March 07, 2002 @05:19AM (#3123595) Homepage
    Just to clarify, the charges are not 0.25c and 0.02c, but $0.25 and $0.02 respectively.

    It's quite a big difference. ;)

  • Same problem in VRML+ - no RAND for public specs! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kbonin ( 58917 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @05:21AM (#3123600)
    Back when I still cared enough to participate in the standards process for VRML and its children, I debated the direction that MPEG4 was discussed as the future direction there, and the degree to which standard bearers lined up to allow RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing encumbered designs [web3d.org].

    The real issue here is that the committees responsible for setting standards are being taken over by corporate plants, placed there by the only organizations that can afford to buy appropriate levels of access to the standards process, or subsidize the activities of their representatives to the extent that they gain mindshare.

    I'm not debating the technical merit of MPEG4, I'm just disgusted at 1) the degree of prior art ignored by the cross-licensed patent portfolios attached to it, and 2) the willingness of standard committees to help force it down the publics throat.

    I applaud the W3C for stepping back some [w3.org] from their previous position, and hope that more standard committees start representing the public instead of building business models. Open source standards built the internet, and we don't need no stinking web taxes when reasonable alternatives exist.

  • Will it only be MPEG4 then? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by forgoil ( 104808 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @05:56AM (#3123631) Homepage
    We have the M$ formats, Quicktime, the horrible and totally useless realmedia, and now mpeg4. Three of them can reach good enough quality for me to download something in that format.(realmedia is just total crap, worthless player that I don't want. I am totally boycotting it until they release a free codec...) But what scared me in the article is how they chose one of these formats (and they choose M$, karma whores) and said "what if that format becomes the only one left?". So what? Oh no, AOL/Time Warner has to pay M$. Yeah right, can't they see that companies such as Microsoft, Realmedia, and Apple (quicktime) are completely in the hands of the media?

    So what does this tell us? It tells us that there is a dumb fear of Microsoft et al, when we should be afraid of the large media corporations. If AOL outlaws everything by their chosen format, what are anyone going to do? The licensing money they would pay is nothing compared to the obvious power they wield, they choose what you can get. Who cares if there is a great format out there, if you can't get any media encoded in it?

    This is what is so sick with the whole Microsoft case, and it reflects to companies wanting us to pay for a codec. These things has to be open and free. All they should have done to M$ should have been to make open all their file formats, and the same with their competition. Java, CLR, etc needs to be in the hands of groups founded by the corporations, but not controlled by the corporation (more than the obvious of requesting features).

    Take a look at the mobile market and GSM. Look at how many GSM phones are sold every month in Europe by Nokia and Ericsson. Then tell me that a standard that everyone can use is a bad idea! (GSM is Ericssons doing, so is BlueTooth)

    The bottom line is, they can charge as much as they want, or have it as free as they want, but it's the media companies that holds all the aces, and among them the big powerful ISPs are showing the ugly face.
  • Will users be charged for viewing MPEG4 content if streaming is not involved? I hope not. Getting users accustomed to paying for MPEG4 content regardless of how it's delivered is a small step away from getting users accustomed to paying usage fees for all content.

  • Yet Another Useless Initiative (Score:4, Insightful)

    by duvel2 ( 558047 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @06:32AM (#3123681)
    You'd think corporations would have learned some lessons by now.

    Lessons like:

    There is not one example where micropayments created a profit

    People aren't gonna start paying for something that they can have for free and that they always used to have for free

    You can't possibly expect that your product will be The Final® and that nobody will ever come up with an even better solution way before you've recouped your investments.

    Until companies learn this, there will always be some initiative to try and make money of things that will never be profitable. We've seen this with JPG, where as a result a lot of websites are switching to PGN, and now we will see this again with MPEG4.

    Face the facts: things need to be scarce in order to make money of them. E.g. you can't sell air when you're outdoors. You can sell air to a colony on mars or to scubadivers. Likewise: you can't sell digital content because it cannot be made scarce once it's accessible on a PC. Infinite copies can and will be made. And again for al the corporations out there that try to make money of patenting hyperlinks: Whatever you're patent is, it will be copied (or remade or rebuilt or re-engineered or ...) and you will loose the money you invested.

  • Another fair idea killed by greedy, stupid suits.

    No biggie. The available bandwidth maked the need for it moot anyway.
  • No-one's complaining about paying $500 for dedicated PVR's instead of mpeg-4 on their PC's. Compared to the money people want to pay for convenience the royalty on the codec is nothing. Then of course, no-one ever complained about the fees for video on demand either. Is the .02/hour use fee really going to force people to give up their $60/hour wireless connection to watch it on a PC?

  • They agreed earlier this week on specifications for HD-DVD playback and recordable formats, and it is very possible that MPEG4 will be eliminated from the equation entirely. Check out: http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20020301S0091 I'm sure they are waiting for the announcement this summer on the "true" cost of the licensing before they pull the trigger, but it looks like MPEG2 will be the standard for HD-DVD recorders, and MPEG2 could remain the standard for HD-DVD playback.
  • In short, "Open source has two advantages," he says. "First, it doesn't cost anything. Second, you don't need approval to toy with it -- you don't have to ask permission to go to the bathroom."

    I don't have to ask for permission to piss on proprietary standards, thank you :)
  • The two cents per hour charge is applied to the producer of the content, not the consumer.

    The questions about how this additional charge would be audited is one of the major points that Apple and others have raised. None of them are happy with this, as it makes it difficult for their customers to make use of the technology.

  • Reply from MPEG4 Licensing Association (Score:4, Informative)

    by frankie ( 91710 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @10:59AM (#3124385) Journal

    After the previous /. article about MPEG4, I wrote to licensing@mpegla.com and said "if you want Windows Media to win the streaming war, then keep the per-use fee". Much to my amazement, they sent back a reply that was actually relevant to my concerns. It wasn't the answer I wanted, but at least they have good form letters.

    Received: from massive.mpegla.com ([12.41.161.2]) by mx2del.umbc.edu
    X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.4417.0
    Subject: Your Recent Email
    Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:41:04 -0700
    From: "MPEG-4 Visual Licensing" <MPEG-4VisualLicensing@mpegla.com>

    Thanks for sharing your views with us regarding the reported MPEG-4 Visual licensing terms and your interest in using the MPEG-4 Visual Standard. I know this email may sound like a canned response, but since you took the time to write to us and others who wrote us raised similar concerns, we wanted to get back to you (and the others) to explain the situation. We understand that you have strong feelings about the MPEG-4 Visual licensing terms based on what you've heard, and we welcome your feedback. The license agreement is still in the process of being worked out, your views are important to us, and they will be taken into consideration. Similarly, I hope you will allow us this opportunity to clarify a few things that may have been misunderstood and to explain where this goes from here.

    First, we would like to clarify the role of MPEG LA. MPEG LA's business is to make it possible for new technologies (like MPEG-4 Video) to enter the marketplace by making the essential intellectual property rights owned by many patent owners accessible to everyone on fair, reasonable, nondiscriminatory terms under a single license. If there were no MPEG LA, the essential patent rights that made the MPEG-4 Visual technology possible would still have to be dealt with, but instead of having the opportunity to deal with one company for a single license that includes those rights, users' only option would be to deal with each patent holder individually. With MPEG LA, the marketplace is assured of ready access to MPEG-4 Visual essential patents owned by 18 different companies (soon there will be more, but our goal is to include as many essential patents as possible in one license; therefore, royalty rates will not increase during the term of the agreement even as new patent owners and more patents are included). What you've seen is the first step in that process.

    We understand that the success of a licensing program relies on the success of the underlying technology. Therefore, our goal, like yours, is to promote the widest possible use of the MPEG-4 Visual standard, and we are sensitive to the need to structure a reasonable license that is consistent with marketplace conditions. To that end, we continue to work with the patent owners to assure that the license is responsive. Everything is in a state of constant review. If something isn't right, every effort is made to fix it. Because of MPEG LA's role, you have the opportunity to discuss your concerns with us, and we in turn can communicate them to the patent owners. We note that there are many different views to be considered, however, and that ultimately the marketplace will decide. We note also that there may be many reasons (having nothing to do with licensing terms) why someone may delay a product introduction or choose among competing alternatives. And, it would be a mistake to assume that any alternative is or will be free of patent licensing obligations or without additional charges of its own.

    Finally, we understand that you do not agree with the implementation of a use fee. Given the nature of MPEG-4 Visual technology and the importance of encouraging the wide availability of MPEG-4 Visual decoders and encoders in the market, the patent owners' intention was that reasonable royalties should be shared among industry participants across the entire product chain and applies equally to both wired and wireless services (especially as the ability to distinguish between them disappears). The philosophy underlying the use fee was intended to be consistent with the expected flow of MPEG-4 video transactions so that those who can pay will and those who can't aren't expected to: thus, the use royalties to be paid by service providers are tied to remuneration - if service providers or content providers are paid for offering or providing MPEG-4 video, then patent holders are paid for the use of their patents; if service providers or content providers are not paid for offering or providing MPEG-4 video, then patent owners are not paid for the use of their patents. The entire license including the use fee, its application to broadcast/cablecast/multichannel environments, etc., is under study and will be the subject of further discussion.

    This is just the beginning. The licensing terms were just announced on January 31, and the details of the MPEG-4 Visual license agreement are still being worked out. Because of the challenge posed by the effort to produce a joint licensing program requiring a consensus among at least 18 different patent owners and the yet undetermined future implementations and applications of the emerging MPEG-4 Visual technology, this may take several months to complete. There will be much discussion before all of this is sorted out, and changes may be expected. Again, we appreciate your contribution to this process and will keep you informed.

    Sincerely, Larry Horn Vice President, Licensing
    • I had to look through all the comments to see if anyone else had posted it, so i'll not post it too. Not a bad form letter though, and it pretty much did address my concerns.

      I hate the fact that everyone is moving to these idiotic subscription models...it's really just a way for providers to fleece the market just that much more.
    • We understand that the success of a licensing program relies on the success of the underlying technology.

      They don't get it. In fact, they have it backwards. The success of a technology depends on the success of its licensing: if no one will buy it, it won't succeed. This is what killed Beta. It's also what relegated Macs to the niche they're in now. And now, it may do the same to MPEG-4.
  • Couldn't Apple just change the codec for the new quicktime and pretty much set the standard? Since most of Real's codecs are moving toward open standards, and MS probably will go with something similar to the MPEG-LA standard, so "we" would be still in the same place. One standard for quicktime (which I would like to see on Linux), one for Real, and some stupid codec for M$. In the long run, something free, like the mp3 codec will win out, I am not going to pay fees. Squanto

  • Having Flashbacks of GIF (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ebresie ( 123014 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @12:08PM (#3124731) Homepage Journal
    Isn't this the whole thing that happen with the GIF format...someone started trying to make money off of it and then people started using jpeg, png,etc to overcome it.


    Oh well, I guess in the end, they have to make money, but shouldn't it be up to the makers that implement the cost concerns and not the patent holders?

  • What do you get for the fees? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mpsmps ( 178373 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @01:02PM (#3125049)
    The first question I would ask about the licensing fees is whether MPEG4 provides enough added value to justify choosing it over the less expensive/free alternatives.

    The quality doesn't appear to justify it. My experience with various mpeg video formats is that they are not better (and probably worse) than On2's open-source and (reasonably priced) commercial solutions. It is certainly worth forming your own opinion by checking out On2 [on2.com]'s demos at their website.

    As the quality is not sufficiently better to achieve an ROI based on reduced bandwidth, what is MPEG counting on to entice people to pay their fees? Several possibilities (some mentioned in the article):

    • Brand value. mpeg is much better known than the alternatives. This can be a powerful asset. I switched my long-distance from Qwest [qwest.com] to PowerNet Global [powernetglobal.com]. There is no difference in quality because PNG uses Qwest's infrastructure, but I pay less than half as much as I did, but I realize a lot more people go with Qwest than PNG. In effect, the extra fees go to paying Qwest's marketing, which gives them more market share than the extra price costs them.
    • Useful features in MP4. I have no idea what features MP4 has over VP3/4/5 that are not visible by viewing the demos on the web, but the article suggests there may be some.
    • Patent muscle. This surprised me as On2 has been around for some time and once had a market cap of about $1 billion (I miss those days!). They could have sued them when they had the prospect of getting real money in a judgment, where now there is no prospect of getting money from them or the open-source alternatives. I suspect this implies they don't have much of a case.
    • Negotiating strategy. I have been involved in quite a few enterprise-level business negotiations. Both sides often take extreme initial positions to give them room to negotiate. The belief is that if you begin with your best offer, you'll have to settle on something unacceptable. My experience suggests this is a rational negotiating strategy. The mpeg team is going to face tough negotiating with the major media companies and may feel they need some things they can give away. In this case, they will expect to end up reducing their fees but still be better off than if they had started with a more reasonable offer.

    It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

  • Actually, no... (Score:4, Funny)

    by A_Non_Moose ( 413034 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @01:34PM (#3125349) Homepage Journal
    ...would you prefer EVERYTHING be rendered on the fly?

    I'd prefer it be rendered on a monitor, video screen or tv.

    A fly is too small to render images on, IMO.

  • The point everyone seems to be missing in and about this article is that it's totally erroneous and misleading. Salon spends all it's time discussing alternative codecs (the compression/decompression algorithms that work on tracks) when the debate is really over format (the way in which the various tracks and data of a file are stored and coordinated). The MPEG 4 architecture, like Quicktime and Video for Windows and to a lesser degree Real and Windows Media, can use many different codecs, including VP3, ogg, mp3, DivX, and so forth, in addition to the default codec (which is also called MPEG4). Designing and implementing a robust architecture that can handle many different classes and instances of data in many different ways is much more complex than writing a simple compression algorithm. VfW, WMP, and Real all have severe limitations, which is why MPEG4 was based on Quicktime. Indeed, if MPEG-LA doesn't get it's act together, they may find Apple pulling the rug out from under them with an updated version of Quicktime itself. Apple didn't spend all that time and effort developing Quicktime 6 around MPEG-4 for nothing, and the similarities between the two architectures would make switching relatively simple.

  • ISMA (Score:2, Interesting)

    by deblau ( 68023 )
    [disclaimer] I am one of a group who represent the Inktomi membership in the ISMA. [/disclaimer]

    The article quotes Tom Jacobs on the official ISMA position on the matter, and I can vouch for that position personally. I was at our last meeting in NYC on Feb 4 when he first stated it. I can clarify a few points:

    1. First, that we are unhappy with the MPEG-LA licensing terms, but we are actively pursuing discussion of those terms with them.
    2. ISMA's stated charter [isma.tv] is interoperability of rich streaming media over IP networks. It is explicitly stated that we want player-neutral protocols. If MPEG-4 licensing makes it non-player-neutral, well... draw your own conclusions.
    3. We are considering many protocol options. ISMA is composed of two arms, technical and marketing. The tech guys (myself included) are all over using open-source. What remains to be seen is whether or not those solutions can provide the features that our marketing and retail appliance partners are demanding. (Hint to Ogg Tarkin guys: this is your cue to get motivated.)
    Furthermore, let's get something straight about MPEG-LA. (N.B. This information comes straight from a presentation Larry Horn gave at the ISMA meeting.)

    MPEG-LA is composed of those companies or entities who have critical IP in MPEG-4 video and systems technologies. Two points:

    • Critical IP. This means MPEG-4 can't be implemented without trampling on these guys' patents. Implementation-specific IP (i.e. a particular vendor's patented player) doesn't cut it.
    • Video and systems. This doesn't cover audio. Yes, it's stupid, but that's the way it is. (Systems, btw, is all that feature-rich stuff beyond video and audio, like embedded scrolling text, etc etc)
    If anyone anywhere wants to implement MPEG-4 video, they're gonna have to talk to MPEG-LA. Go ask the Quicktime guys. Notice how they released the streaming server but not the encoder/decoder retail products? Same goes for open-source implementations of MPEG-4, which, in my opinion, are gonna suffer because people don't wanna pay anything for what should be free encoders/decoders. Yes, the licensing is $0.50 ($0.25 for both encoder and decoder), which is not much, but I don't think people will accept that.

    ISMA is in charge of the de-facto standard for streaming media online. It'd be cool if we used open-source, but we have to go with what we can get that meets our requirements. The ball is in your court, Xiph. If you wanna make a name for yourselves, this is the break you've been waiting for.

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