At 11:10 AM -0400 10/20/04, Manfredi, Albert E wrote: >The actual codecs might not have changed, I don't >know whether they have or not, but I note that >Microsoft is beyond WM9 already. WM10 is out. > >Possibly, Microsoft will obsolete its own WM9 >codecs before they have a chance to even become >an industry standard? What the article only glanced over is the fact that there is a huge overlap in the patent pool for H.264 (AVC) and VC-1. This is one of the main areas of conflict in SMPTE, as many of the companies in the patent pool are also active in the SMPTE. Once it became known that MPEG-LA was going to offer licenses for VC-1, with terms that are not likely to be much different than for H.264, the VC-1 initiative lost considerable momentum. As for evolution, the article did a pretty good job of pointing out the industry concerns about working with Msoft. Obsolesence is not a major factor. In general, codecs evolve incrementally, adding new tools to the existing toolkit. With H.264 and VC-1 there have been some significant new IP additions; many of these were considered for MPEG-2, but were too computationally complex to be used at that time. In almost every case, new codecs can easily support the codecs that came before, which require less computational power. If you are clever, you can augment an existing codec in a way that will allow new decoders to use the extra info without causing old decoders to break. As we are seeing now, Microsoft built VC-1 atop the existing intellectual property of about ten companies ( note that MSoft has IP in H.264). Trying to make this an industry standard forced Microsoft to revel what was under the Kimono, thus opening VC-1 up to IP claims from the other companies, in a way that was much more public than would have been the case if Microsoft had tried to keep the codec proprietary. In the end, however, the other IP holders would have gone after MSoft...eventually. Regards Craig ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.