[opendtv] News: Video board approves Apple-supported codecs
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:10:52 -0500
http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/11/09/avc/index.php
November 09, 2004 1:10 pm ET
MacCentral
Video board approves Apple-supported codecs
By Jim Dalrymple jdalrymple@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The Digital Video Broadcasting Steering Board (DVB) has approved a
revision to its implementation guidelines for audio and video codecs
over a broadcast Transport Stream. The revision includes two
technologies supported by Apple Computer Inc., H.264 or Advanced
Video Codec (AVC) and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codecs.
AVC and AAC are codecs supported by MPEG-4, an open standard
technology based on the QuickTime file format and adopted by the ISO
governing body.
"The investment we made in the MPEG-4 standard is paying off
incredible dividends for QuickTime and for Apple," Frank Casanova,
Apple's director of QuickTime product marketing, told MacCentral.
"Allowing the ISO the use our file format has turned out to be the
best decisions we could have made."
AVC was discussed less than a year ago as an up-and-coming codec, but
in recent months the technology has gained traction being ratified
for the HD-DVD and Blu-Ray specs -- the two new standards for high
definition content on DVDs.
"AVC is clearly the chosen direction, which comes as no surprise to
me because interoperability across any industry is important," said
Casanova. "Any proprietary technology would naturally get shutout
where interoperability and openness is required. MPEG-4 provides a
level of openness and compatibility that all of these different
industries from 3G to HD all require."
In addition to the ratification by DVB, AVC has received the nod from
the MPEG-4 group, the 3GGP group and the Association of Japanese
Broadcasters. While worldwide support for the technology has been
quick, the United States broadcasters have yet to ratify AVC, except
for use in HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. With the benefits the technology
brings to broadcasters, Apple thinks it's just a matter of time.
"The broadcasters in the U.S. haven't made a final decision about
what technologies they will use, but I think it's just a matter of
time," said Casanova. "Japan and the European community have gone
forward and I have no doubt that as the broadcast communities here in
the U.S. decide how to make the most effective use of the bandwidth
available, they will chose AVC. It makes good business sense -- it
saves them bandwidth and at the same time gives them more programming
flexibility."
With its ability to encode content for so many mediums, Casanova sees
uses for AVC in many of the everyday things we do today, including
DVD movies, Cable television providers, on-demand television in
hotels and next-generation cellular telephones. For example, with
AVC, DVD content authoring houses could use the same size DVD disk,
but output the content in HD quality.
"Cable providers will be able to encode their content at HD quality
and send it down the wire at the same data rate as MPEG-2, yet get
much better quality," said Casanova.
As with MPEG-4 itself, AVC is an open standard, which means that many
different companies contribute to the process of evolving the codec
into something the public sees on their computer or television.
"This is a technology that we've been intimately involved with for a
while -- everybody, including Apple is very excited about this. It's
about interoperability, standards and openness -- something we've
been all about across QuickTime and much of Apple for a long time."
Competition from Microsoft
Microsoft Corp. is touting its Windows Media Player 9 format as
competition for AVC, but Casanova sees several reasons that AVC will
win out in the end, not the least of which is performance.
"Windows Media 9 is a few years old and it's evolved a few times,"
said Casanova. "AVC is brand new -- it's just at the very beginning
of its quality and optimization curves. This puts us in an incredible
advantage from a competitive standpoint because Windows Media has
likely had most of its optimizations and performance wrung out of it
already by Microsoft's engineers and we're just getting started."
Microsoft has submitted the Windows Media 9 format to the Society of
Motion Picture and Television Engineers as a standard, but unlike an
open standard, only Microsoft can make changes and enhancements to
the Windows Media format. With an open standard like AVC, all member
companies contribute to the technology.
"We feel so confident about this technology against the competition
[Windows Media 9]," said Casanova. "We have no concerns at all -- we
are thrilled with it from a video standpoint and certainly I couldn't
be happier from a worldwide industry adoption perspective."
Apple has long preached the benefits of using and promoting open
standards in its software. It is the interoperability of these
standards that Apple believes will lead AVC to continue to be adopted
in the future.
"The DVB selection of AVC is just one more example of where the world
is insisting on open standards," said Casanova. "It doesn't matter if
you're a cell phone manufacturer, broadcaster or producer of HD
decoded video, interoperability counts. AVC is being ratified into
relevancy by all of these standards organizations and Apple is right
there.
"In this world of 'my codec is better than yours' -- this codec is
better," said Casanova.
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