[opendtv] Re: A detail in the history of video standards

At 3:16 PM -0700 8/31/05, Ron Economos wrote:
>Your statement doesn't make sense. Almost everything that's different in
>MPEG-2 from MPEG-1 is for interlace. If all video was progressive,
>we'd still be using MPEG-1.
>

At the tool level there is some merit to what you say. But MPEG-2 
brought many new things to the table, some of which have never been 
commercialized.

I believe you will find that the interframe prediction tools are more 
refined in MPEG-2 than with MPEG-1. And MPEG-1 is very limited in 
terms of the rasters that it supports, although this is just a 
"paper" limitation. MPEG-2 also includes the systems work that is now 
used to transport MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 content.

I would suggest a much different outcome if all video were 
progressive. Initially, it would have been possible to improve the 
inter-frame prediction tools as more Mips (wasted on coding 
interlace) would have been available to improve the prediction 
routines. And I suspect that the innovations in AVC would have been 
standardized much sooner as well, if interlace were not a concern.

Software codecs tend to be updated more frequently than the 
algorithms that get mass produced in silicon. Reading between the 
lines of my previous post, it should be obvious that the companies 
that co-opted MPEG-2 have little interest in continuous innovation - 
they wanted, but did not get a standard that would last for decades.

In this case history is NOT repeating itself.

Regards
Craig
 
 
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