[opendtv] Re: News: M'soft coup starts media codec fight

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:32:53 -0400

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
 
 
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