Comments on: MPEG-4 is Dead | Hardware loses and Firmware wins

By: rita

rita — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:25:32 +0000

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By: jwenting

jwenting — Mon, 10 May 2004 14:24:45 +0000

The author is a Microsoft basher
Of course the DVD “standard” itself is proprietary and require (for each of the different “standard” formats) license fees.

That’s the reason why manufacturers are asking customers to pay for firmware upgrades that add new formats for writing, they need to pay the fee on every single download of that firmware themselves and are just passing on the cost.

By: robotarmy

robotarmy — Sat, 08 May 2004 07:25:57 +0000

Re: “they did it because all the ripped movies were in these formats”
My ripped movies experience is stale – my last consistent work in this area was in 2001-2002, when the movies were either in old DivX (which WAS MS MPEG-4v3 + MP3 in an AVI candy shell) or was the new real MPEG-4 DivX codec. We actually worked with the DivX guys, opimized some of their code for the Altivec on Macintosh.

I remember in that time period, there was a lot of hybrid situations, where MS codecs, both audio and video, were being used.

I also imagine that perhaps a lot of the high quality rips are put out in mpeg4, but a lot of home ripping for personal archival use is probably in MS codec – realize, it’s free, no hoops to jump through, easily exported by whatever capture tools ship with the computer, etc. So I would imagine there’s a lot of VHS-tape type material that end users have never bothered to upload, because it’s their own Simpsons episodes or Sex in the City or whatever, on CD that they can later play in their $39 DVD player.

That’s what I suspect… also, there is 1-2 year lead time in all this hardware stuff, so by the time I saw DVD players with all these features, I knew there must be a market of people with media to play in these formats.

I know that MS was working to make better-than-DVD (like 4 movies on one DVD) 1-megabit bitrate video for several years, so whatever partnerships they were doing in this direction had an influence as well.

By: robotarmy

robotarmy — Sat, 08 May 2004 07:20:09 +0000

The author is a Microsoft basher
Ummmm… I put proprietary in ‘quotes’ which means I didn’t really ‘mean’ proprietary. I could have said quote-unquote “proprietary” with double quotes. The whole point I was trying to make was that although MS gets criticised for being “proprietary” (where proprietary = bad), in fact the broad, consumer-driven and popular use of their codec means that is became a defacto-standard (defacto standard = good).

If merely discussing prevailing views of a topic and contrasting them is bashing, I… apologise. I never meant to bash them. I thought I was saying sort of nice things. Heck, the whole article is sort of MPEG-4 loses MS wins. Please forgive me.

By: ffub

ffub — Sat, 08 May 2004 00:12:55 +0000

The author is a Microsoft basher
By proprietary he is referring to the control of the technology. Although MPEG$ implementations require licensing, the technical format is arbitrated by a committee. His beef and usage of ‘proprietary’ refers to a codec/format or whatever that is controlled, implemented and distributed by one private company.

By: alexvaldez

alexvaldez — Fri, 07 May 2004 20:31:46 +0000

The author is a Microsoft basher
Usual disclaimers apply – IANAL, etc.

It all depends on what you mean by ‘proprietary’. MPEG standards are set by ISO/IEC MPEG, which asks all submitters to sign a statement saying that they will license their patents on ‘reasonable and non-discriminatory’ terms.

By: musnat

musnat — Fri, 07 May 2004 19:26:59 +0000

The author is a Microsoft basher
I don’t think the author is fair in his article, and he is misinforming people about the facts. For example he misuses the word ‘proprietary’ to differentiate Microsoft from others. It is quite known that mpeg 4 is also proprietary and that you have to pay a license to use it. So I think the author is really trying to confuse people and spread some FUD regarding Microsoft.

By: alexvaldez

alexvaldez — Fri, 07 May 2004 18:29:42 +0000

Re: “they did it because all the ripped movies were in these formats”
I suspect that the overwhelming popularity of DivX and MPEG-4 is precisely the reason why the DVD forum is now giving their blessings to Windows media.

By: dumky

dumky — Fri, 07 May 2004 14:39:10 +0000

Re: "they did it because all the ripped movies were in these formats" where have you seen a wmv ripped movie? As far as I can tell, divX and mpeg4 are more popular (check your favorite P2P software or http://suprnova.org/ ).