China Proposes Rival Video Format 424
Richard Finney writes "Yahoo News is reporting that
the Chinese government is supporting an effort to develop a homegrown standard, called 'AVS,' for compressing digital audio and video in order to avoid paying royalties
on proprietary compression schemes.
The AVS groups website is online but in Chinese."
6 billion people (Score:2, Interesting)
Plus, with other players wanting to enter the market, the Chinese will probably make some money on royalties as well.
Re:6 billion people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:6 billion people (Score:5, Informative)
Total population figure is irrelevant though. Even if people in rural Fujian aren't making enough money to buy a lot of DVDs, there are 16 million people in Beijing and several million more in the Yantze river delta. And when the population of just a few Chinese cities starts to rival countries like Germany... it makes a huge difference for international standards competition.
Re:1.2 billion (Score:5, Informative)
Re:1.2 billion (Score:2)
Re:1.2 billion (Score:2, Informative)
Re:1.2 billion (Score:2, Funny)
Re:1.2 billion (Score:2, Insightful)
No, but you bullshit the world, and pretend you're all one big free democratic nation.
Re:1.2 billion (Score:2, Funny)
No, no, I won't fall for that! I still remember what happened to Dmitry Sklyarov what he "came to check it out"...
Re:1.2 billion (Score:4, Funny)
Well, according to the RIAA the population in China is the equivalent of 900 million people, since the chinese are a bit shorter.
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that a democratic governments making money guarantees that *all* the people will get their fair share. If you believe yours does, you live in cloud cuckoo land.
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I know many people's definition of "fair share" vary, and I'm not going to pretentiously claim what the Founding Fathers would have wanted, but it seems that an increasing number of people believe that simply existing inside our borders entitles them to a share of the country's collective wealth.
There used to be a time when people relied upon hard work, innovation, and ambition to achieve success, rather than expect it to be handed to them. Both corporations and individuals are prone to this new entitlement mentality, and it's the working stiffs that are getting screwed.
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:2)
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:2)
Re:Chinese PEOPLE won't make money (Score:3, Interesting)
You say that as if the purpose of government is to make money for it's citizens. Not only has that ideology, when put into practice, failed repeatedly, but a truly free society has a government that simply allows its citizens to create their own success.
"The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." -Benjamin Franklin
if companies paid their taxes maybe it would help (Score:4, Insightful)
Taxation of profit is the promise that the government makes to the people.
Tax collectors have the most powerful range of search and siezure laws on their side.
Here in the UK a VAT collector can, with reasonable cause, turn up and any hour of the day or night and provided he is accompanied by two police officers he can enter your premises even if that means breaking in. No warrant, no judge, sieze first - ask questions later.
So why is it just that the world's most profitable companies avoid paying fair taxation?
If you believe in Democracy you believe in taxation, that's the deal.
It is not good enough to set up "the Foundation" and do public work. The will of the people is that you pay the government and we'll take care of it from there, thank you very much.
It is in this way that monopolies should not threaten their customers. Taxation is one of the checks and balances against run-away profiteering. If you had to pay 90% tax on the top end of the balance sheet then diminishing returns act as a disincentive.
The stagnant two party system that has gripped the major democracies is anti-freedom.
Dynasties are broken by internal power struggles spilling out into civil war or barbarian hordes.
Demonizing the "others", one nation under god.
But break they will and break they must.
Re:6 billion people? (Score:2)
Piracy? (Score:3, Funny)
Just a thought.
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
As ridiculous as this sounds, I don't doubt that it's possible. After all, the good DVD player that I bought a few years ago for $750 is sitting right underneath the cheap & nasty $150 DVD player that will play my burnt (S)VCDs. (please bear in mind that I live in Australia, so the prices won't sound right to anyone in the US) The truly annoying thing is
Re:Piracy? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Piracy? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, all bootleg DVDs are region-free to allow the most number of people to use them. That is not to say many legitimate DVDs aren't region-free, in China, Hong Kong, and elsewhere (while most DVDs from the US are region 1, you will find many that have no region restrictions built-in).
DVD players that can be modified to be region-free (usually through a remote hack) work excellently. The Nerd-out forums [nerd-out.com] and dvdrhelp's player hack list [dvdrhelp.com] are both very helpful in finding a region-free player or finding out if your current player is region-free. But basically, once you have a region-free player, you can watch DVDs from anywhere. Especially if you have one that does proper PAL -> NTSC conversion, allowing you to play anamorphic widescreen DVDs from Europe and any other PAL countries (CyberHome and Malata are two brands to look at with this feature).
Re:Piracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
Region-free sometimes isn't enough, though. The ideal DVD player allows you to set it to any region, because DVDs can play tricks like trying one region, and if it plays on that, refusing to play the main content which is from another region.
In general, I've found the whole DVD script stuff to be a PITA. Often to play a disc, rather than selecting play I have to go to the "chapter select" screen and sele
Re:Piracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who the heck do you think manufactures all the players? Chinese companies. They'll throw in AVS support for nothing with their players (no point in setting up 2 production lines when 1 will do), just like they threw in support for VCD and SVCD. And then the players will get shipped to every country in the world.
In fact, this is a real shot in the arm for piracy, as they can rip the video from DVDs, repackage it in non-region encoded AVS format. Then they fire it around the wibbly-wobbly web in handy, ready-to-burn form and their little pirate buddies with an AVS-compliant player go "Woohoo! No more swapping SVCD discs!"
But, for exactly the same reasons, it'll also be a boost for amateur and small media production companies as they won't have to pay Philips and Sony a big wad of their earnings to get their media distributed worldwide.
A better question would be: given China's intransigence when it comes to upholding international intellectual property agreements, should we rip off this format, use it for publishing everything, make tools to create and edit AVS files willy-nilly, burn AVS discs, blah, blah, blah..., and not pay them one red cent for it?
Re:Piracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Piracy? (Score:2)
Go China! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Go China! (Score:5, Informative)
if only theu made friends with India... (Score:5, Interesting)
Open Source is the only way to go if they want to avoid royalties...
when you have one billion inhabitant, anything can become a huge problem...
I remember my economy eacher telling us why coffee was badly seen as a morning drink in china. Because if only 1/2 of your population takes one cup coffee in the day, it amounts to 50 tons a day in purely imports...
And, also, if their standard is proposed as is in all future media players (say, how many DVD players are not made in China ?) this standard could become the worlds standards...
And the whole world will have to pay royalties to China...
Ahhhn Anticipation ! 8)
Re:if only theu made friends with India... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:if only theu made friends with India... (Score:2)
And this would be a bad thing? Isolated economies do not perform well, it is only when you open up to the world market that you can really take off. Not having many imports may look good for your economy on paper, but in reality it is a major obstacle to development. It means your population
Re:if only theu made friends with India... (Score:3, Funny)
You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bet you'll be glad for all the stem cell research they will do, with all their aborted female foetuses, when your liver packs in 20 years from now.
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:5, Interesting)
This goes even further, as the grandfather of the guy currently occupying your president's seat has built the family fortune by dealing with the nazis:
http://www.baltech.org/lederman/bush-nazi-fortu
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:3, Interesting)
FrankOlsonProject [frankolsonproject.org]
and watch the show named "Code Name Artichoke" on WorldLink TV channel
10.33
Also at Kransberg Castle: Some of the leading scientific experts in Nazi Germany had been involved in biological warfare, testing the effects of deadly germs on human beings in Dachau and other concentration camps. One of them was Professor Kurt Blome. Blome was the Third Reich's Deputy Surgeon General and the man behind German research into biological weapons.
10.55
Blome will be among those charged in the case a
Ermmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's just say that your local media is more likely to tell you that another country is Bad(tm) then tell you about the stuff your own country is up to.
I'm not condoning any form of human rights abuse, I'd really like to live in a nice, happy, peaceful world, but let's face it; the west is not exactly utopia either. I saw a post around here the other day from a chinese
Re:Ermmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Our government makes some colossal blunders - every government does. But to compare the United States (the largest foreign aid contributor in the world) to a country like China is ridiculous.
Did you compare AI's report on the U.S. to their report on China [amnesty.org]? Don't bother answering, because I know you didn't.
The highlights of the U.S. report consists of the detention of 600 foreign nationals arrested in military combat (boo fucking hoo) and the fact that we still exercise the death penalty. The China report details the systematic detention of TENS OF THOUSANDS of Chinese citizens for expressing dissenting opinions. "Torture and ill-treatment remained widespread and appeared to increase".
If you were a Chinese citizen and had posted the same comment, you could very possibly wind up in prison.
Get a fucking grip. No, better, move to China.
Re:Ermmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Untrue
The US is fourth in absolute terms of overseas aid given (behind Japan Germany and France). In terms of percentage national income, the US at 0.12 per cent, ranks below Uganda.
Mod parent down. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, when some engineers in China do something good and useful, like create a new, free video standard, one should cheer them on for that and encourage them. That doesn't amount to a wholesale endorsement of the Chinese government or their political system.
The US has plenty of human rights, social, and economic problems itself and plenty of historical baggage. You should worry about that before you are in a position to single-handedly condemn a country of a billion inhabitants.
Re:You know you're an FOSS zealot when... (Score:2)
Re:Go China! (Score:2)
I think they'd rather be a new Microsoft than a new Open Software Foundation.
Re:Go China! (Score:2)
But is it too far fetched to suggest chinese citizens got sick of Microsoft pressurising them into buying their software?
Re:Go China! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Go China! (Score:3, Informative)
OK they are not a friendly goverment. But I have met a couple of people who work there and they like it.
Seing as so much IT work is starting to go to India and China I am seriously considering a move in the next couple of years.
The Chinease goverment is slowly getting better and the western goverments are getting more authorotarian. So I don't think it will ma
Re:Go China! (Score:2)
History has show repeatedly that mass communication tools (printing press, radio, tv, internet, etc) have a very strong effect on the population and more often that not lead to changes in how a country is run. It also facilitates greatly in getting resisting groups together.
So all in all i think it's great in two ways, first it's a great contribution for the open source world, and secondly a information revolution in china could very well s
fish translation (Score:3, Informative)
Yet another proprietary codec... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yet another proprietary codec... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not yet, I think they want a truly free VIDEO format, not just a codec. All current ones have some kind of baggage on them meaning they where developed by a company that at any time may decide to start charging. Remember what happenend to the royalty free MP3 and gif formats?
I am not really sure why this is a money matter for china, unless they are planning on becoming huge content providers the cost of licensing current formats is peanuts. I think it is more political. A truly free standard would not see
Re:Yet another proprietary codec... (Score:5, Informative)
Xiph.org is also developing the experimental wavelet-based "Tarkin" codec. As I understand it, it's more written from "scratch", much like Ogg Vorbis, but is even further ahead in the future than Ogg Theora, which they are focusing on right now.
The beauty of standards is... (Score:4, Funny)
(I don't remember who said that but that's daamn right
Not Invented Here syndrome (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not Invented Here syndrome (Score:2)
Bye egghat.
Re:Not Invented Here syndrome (Score:2)
Re:Not Invented Here syndrome (Score:2)
They want to OWN patents (Score:4, Informative)
It is true that paying royalties to domestic companies is much better than paying foreigners (we all remember the DVD player fiasco), and it doesn't matter much whether ship-making (etc.) technologies are open or closed, but I don't think the current policies are suitable for software and related technologies. Mandating domestic proprietary (and sometimes incompatible) standards over existing free (as in freedom) ones may create more GDP in royalties, and possibly give domestic companies some advantage in competition (unlikely), but ordinary people actually loses.
Being a Chinese citizen, I think the situation here is similar to that in the US in 1970s as described by RMS. Basically most people are not aware of IP, and those who are getting to know it rush to "protect" it, few have yet to get the notion of free software(information, knowledge, etc.).
Here's to the next 5000 years of isolationism (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here's to the next 5000 years of isolationism (Score:5, Insightful)
China never really has gotten over that "we are the center of the earth" mentality have they?
In my experience the USA has the same problem at times.
Re:Here's to the next 5000 years of isolationism (Score:2)
As opposed to (Score:5, Informative)
And now of course we have American publishers who want to extend copyright in perpetuity to stop people having fair use of characters in the likes of Rudyard Kipling's books.
You don't understand Chinese culture. (Score:2)
Traditionally, China is the Middle Kingdom. Middle of what, you ask? Well, there is Heaven; there is Earth; between the two is China.
So, saying they think they're the center of the Earth is actually an understatement.
Re:Interesting? (Score:2)
Except for one problem (Score:2)
So China will have continued supply of cheap labor as long as they can maintain domestic tranquility somehow. They might have to acquire the odd country (Tibet) or continent (Australia watch out) to do this though.
Don't confuse economic quantity for economic quality. Someone rich once said, "I'd r
theora? (Score:2, Insightful)
Patent Policy Bites U.S.? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese seem determined to avoid patent issues by developing their own chips, and now their own video formats.
The intellectual property laws that were supposed to guarantee our technology a dominant position may, in practice, be shutting U.S. companies out of future marketplaces, as tech customers seek a way around excessive royalties and restrictions.
Re:Patent Policy Bites U.S.? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is indeed something which I think will happen if the present US laws are allowed to stand and are perhaps extended into Europe.
There is a term for this type of regulatory aid to National Enterprises: Mercantilism
As each Block seeks to protect its own markets with regulation including copyrights and patents which favour companies from within the block versus those from elsewhere, the markets will become increasingly reluctant to innovate and as many innovations will possibly infringe on existing patents, copyrights, national protective legislation etc, overbroad and lacking in utility.
Most innovation will occur in areas where such regulations are slack in comparison.
Perversely these innovations will not benefit the large closed markets for the same reasons, and lacking in the ability to make use of these new innovations by either importing or internal manufacturing due to high Intellectual Property costs making innovations uneconomic in comparison to exisiting products and services.
It could well be that as Large Multi-National corporations take flight to less regulated economies to gain low cost labour and low cost innovation, those jobs lost will not be replaced by new jobs created via the utilisation of new innovations, in effect locking unemployment into the system.
We can follow this up with an examination of how the USPTO has been increasing the number of patents granted for seemingly spurious claims and look at the fact that the EU is considering enacting a similar set of rules, thanks to the tireless lobbying of US Corporations and US led Industry Pressure Groups, and see that if such Laws are made compatible with existing US patents and US issued patents have the same legal status as EU patents within the EU then a financial bonanza will be the reward for the lobbyists and the US economy in general.
This will however be very short-term and will likely result in an enormous amount of cross regulation where the US Coporations will face IP claims from EU Corporations designed to close out US entry to the EU marketplace and vice versa. And almost certainly an increase in the amount of Industrial Espionage in order to be first to file IP for Patents.
It becomes difficult to see why such measures could be considered useful, but in the short term view which afflicts most corporations worldwide, the opportunity to grab a legal monopoly over entire areas of innovation, potentialy bringing many billions of $ of revenue for little to no outlay, will define how our Governments regulate on these matters.
Re:Patent Policy Bites U.S.? (Score:2)
I wonder if the problem is simply one of scale. In a global market, with people patenting their "inventions" in every area, there are a lot of inventors struggling to be not first to market, but first to file.
I fully expect to see fantasy patents ooze out of the USA into other areas. Once the EU caves in and allows software patents, watch them get swamped by US patent holders trying to file their patents (and variants on them) there.
Re:Patent Policy Bites U.S.? (Score:2)
Same goes for Ogg.
Re:Patent Policy Bites U.S.? (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'm worried about are submarine patents that ought not to have been granted in the first place that may have been missed by the patent search/licensing agreements. I'm thinking of something tangential, like LZW in GIF.
We won't know about them until after Theora becomes widely accepted and popular for a number of years, then a lawyer somewhere will smell blood.
China better than Slashdot?? (Score:5, Interesting)
China : So? We've got RedFlag Linux, we don't bother about US Copyright laws.
Slashdot: Intel settles with Via, latter not to make pin-compatible CPUs after 3 years... blah,blah,blah..
China: Here's the Dragon CPU. Forget Intel, forget Via.
Slashdot: CDMA and GSM are the top technologies for mobile phones.
China: We've developed SCDMA totally in-house. We don't pay royalties for that.
And now...
Slashdot: GIF is out of patent. Some image formats still remain in copyright and patents mess.
China: Here's our video format.
Slashdot: XBox can be hacked to run Linux.
China: Dragon CPU runs Midori Linux. We don't need any damn XBoxes..
And so on.. Slashdotters makes noise, China makes progress.
-
Re:China better than Slashdot?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, their government is oppressive (so is ours, its just a matter of degree). And maybe it will keep them down. But if
Re:China better than Slashdot?? (Score:2, Funny)
Yup. China is a lot better than Slashdot. Slashdot doesn't have any farms, so couldn't support its population without relying entirely on imports from the so called `real world'.
Re:China better than Slashdot?? (Score:3, Interesting)
Never underestemate the power of intelligent people. Educated people can create new things faster than anything we know about in this universe. When you put a human into the right environment, one that doesn't hurt them with rhetoric, propoganda, etc. One that nourishes their natural desire for progress. If you put a person in an environment that will take care of them, give them all the tools and supplies they need, loving people around them to g
communism and IP (Score:4, Insightful)
Now don't think I'm going so far out there. We have similar ideas here, and we at least pretend to practice them. That's the idea behind University research and stuff like that (at least before universities had the right to own the products of their research).
Here in America, I think we need more research done for the public benefit, paid with public money. There are so many intricacies to the vision I have, and I can anticipate many objections, but I'm not going to write a whole long post here. I'm just making a positive suggestion here.
Communism is dead in China. (Score:2)
As state industries continue to close down and more private companies take their place, it beco
Re:communism and IP (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the US government seems to like what it sees there - free ma
Re:communism and IP (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I haven't made up my mind entirely yet. Of course I don't want the government, or
Adult Verification System? (Score:2, Funny)
Why not use an Open Standard (Score:2, Interesting)
- from Real Networks:
- For Movies: http://www.xvid.org [xvid.org]
- for Streaming : http://www.theora.org/ [theora.org]
either they did not do enough research, or they like reinvinting thw wheelProbably Nationalism (Score:5, Insightful)
I admire their technical prowess, but they're not doing it with the good of humanity in mind. It's all about proving that they're not trapped in luohouzhuyi, literally "fall-behind-ism." They've failed as a communist party, so now the only thing keeping them in power is trying to prove that they're making China strong enough to resist foreign interference. That's what this project feels like to me.
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck to them.
Maybe they beat us out on something significant, then we can have another president drive us towards a tangible goal (I'm thinking Kennedy and moon shots here). Maybe that'll shake us out of the self-centered malaise we seem to be in...
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:3, Informative)
They've failed as a communist party
India. [cia.gov] Government type: federal republic. Population: 1,045,845,226. GDP per capita: $2,540. Literacy: 52%. Life expectancy: 62.2 years.
China. [cia.gov] Government type: Communist state. Population: 1,284,303,705. GDP per capita: $4,600. Literacy: 81.5%. Life expectancy: 71.86 years.
Don't get me wrong, China sucks wang, but I'd hardly call it a failure.
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:3, Interesting)
China has all the potential of becoming a 1st world nation throughout (the major cities are comparable to most 1st world nations already - but the peasantry hasn't caught up yet). What is distrubing is that the chinese government seems to be embracing the worst of both worlds - a capitalist-style econo
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:3, Insightful)
What country does anything for the good of humanity?
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, because there are long-term payoffs from the high technology that would need to be developed for such a trip to succeed. Plus, China is quite wise to get millions of Chinese kids excited about space. That will put them far ahead of the US kids, excited about Pokemon.
There is a program to build a navy to rival the US's.
If you saw a potentially hostile and unpredictable country attacking countries for economic reasons the way the US has been, you'd
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:2)
>Show me a government who acts with the good of even only their own population in mind.
Sealand [sealandgov.com].
Re:Probably Nationalism (Score:4, Interesting)
Likely the government of the Orkney Islands. Possibly the government of Iceland.
Notice that those are all really small governments? That isn't happenstance. Notice that none of those countries are powerful? That isn't happenstance.
When a large amount of centralized power is available, it attracts those more interested in power than in doing the ostensible job. This is a part of what happened to ICANN. This is a repeated happening.
Many control freaks can do a good job. That's just not thier interest. So if they don't have to, they won't bother. But they will act so as to increase the amount of control that they can exercise, because that's what they're interested in. So the upper levels of successful corporations and governments tend to be infested with these psychos. (Psychopath may be too strong a word, but I can't think of a better one. Sociopath, perhaps?)
Many organizations, including governments, are founded with worthy purposes, and organized to work efficiently. But the most efficient organizations are easy for the control freaks to subvert, because they depend on the good intentions of those who work there. Checks and balences is a good consideration. That the US design secumbed to the whackos doesn't negate that. Most early designs have bugs. What it is missing is a good debugging procedure. (N.B.: The Alien and Sedition acts were among the first laws passed by Congress. So the perversion of the design didn't take long. But the built in checks and balences stabilised the system, and it recovered. Perhaps we will again, though the corrupt voting machines make me a bit dubious. And being the "pre-eimient nation" has caused the whackos to be even more interested in grabbing power, putting increased strains on the system. Another destabilizing factor is the vast increase in the powers of the executive branch since WWII. A third is the increase in the clandestine branches of government (CIA, NSA, FBI,
International Open Source lobbyists needed. (Score:5, Insightful)
AVS (Score:3, Funny)
Royalty payments? Patents? (Score:2)
It is a way to CONTROL INFORMATION (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting the Kinks Out (Score:3, Funny)
In the clip I saw, a martial artist was moving his mouth extremely rapidly, but the audio was just a slow voice intoning in English:
"So, my young sabretooth, it appears the student has now become the master."
Lotsa codecs (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh... (Score:2)
SVCD was created for the same reasons (Score:2, Informative)
The linked article doesn't mention it, but the SVCD (Super Video CD) format was created in 1998 for the same reasons. Here is a good overview of why and how SVCD was created [uwasa.fi] (some excerpts follow...)
Super Video CD (aka SVCD, Super VCD or Chaoji VCD) is an enhancement to Video CD that was developed by a Chinese government-backed committee of manufacturers and researchers, partly to sidestep DVD technology royalties and partly to create pressure for lower DVD player and disc prices in China. The final SV
Re:Get ready to be second (or third or fourth ...) (Score:2)
What kind of "barrier to entry" would you like to have? As I see it, Open Source (at least bigger projects), where meritocracy reigns, has a higher barrier of entry than proprietary software, in terms of skills. Any moron can get a job doing VB user interfaces, but the moron in question would hardly get *any code* into a high profile OSS project.
Now that there is no incentive to pay for any software, the softwar
Re:Get ready to be second (or third or fourth ...) (Score:2)
What barriers to the field of software engineers existed before the rise of Free Software? Only monetary ones... these days,
Re:Get ready to be second (or third or fourth ...) (Score:2)
Re:what about the other AVS...? (Score:2)