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SMPTE Adoption Of WMV9 Hits Some Snags 274

Posted by timothy from the just-some-pesky-baiting-and-switching dept.
SysKoll writes "EETimes is running an interesting story about the future of the video codecs for HD DVDs. The Redmond Beast convinced both the Blu-ray Disc Association and the DVD Forum to adopt its WMV9 video codec over MPEG4 for the upcoming VC-1 standard that is mandated for high-definition video devices. That was a huge coup for MS. Now it turns out that Microsoft cheated and lied: its code is not as good as MPEG 4, the WMV9 reference implementation is not available, and the WMV9 test suite does not exercise all the features. The SMPTE might drop WMV9 after all. Apparently, a highly technical standard body is harder to snowjob than the usual clueless consumers."
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SMPTE Adoption Of WMV9 Hits Some Snags More

SMPTE Adoption Of WMV9 Hits Some Snags

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  • What?! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:08PM (#10609928)
    I am shocked. Shocked and dismayed. Microsoft lied? My world is falling apart.

    Team Microsoft, fuck yeah!

    • Re:What?! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Enonu ( 129798 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:24PM (#10610030)
      Matt Daemon.
    • It might not be surprising, but independently of how they achieved the result, it's still a quite sad state of affair for us, the people that will be stuck with a crappy codec.

      :(

    • Re:What?! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:33PM (#10610063)
      I was once in a large meeting where the company I was working for was expressing concerns about an agreement they had entered into with Microsoft. One, very wise, ex IBMer who had battle scars from OS/2 told the stunned room:

      "Doing a deal with Microsoft is like going into Mike Tyson's bedroom. You're going to get fucked and you're not going to like it".

      It was topical at the time ...

      • Re:What?! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @04:38PM (#10610630) Homepage Journal
        A friend of mine with many, many years of Microsoft experience with development and a broad range of their server tools and other high-end stuff was in a meeting with the Microsoft rep for his client.

        It quickly became apparent that the Microsoft rep wasn't doing too well, since he wasn't giving acceptable answers to a lot of tough questions. Eventually my friend was asked to leave the meeting. Even though everyone felt the same way, it wasn't too politic to refer to MS as "$^%#ing idiots".

        That's the thing about MS. Thet are just barely good enough to avoid serious repercussions from their incompetence... so far anyway. They seem to have a knack for screwing up the absolute maximum that allows them to maintain their monopoly... or another way, having just enough monopoly to get away with the huge amount of screw-ups they make.

        Oh, well, VS6 is a good product and that's what my world is about.

    • Re:What?! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jschottm ( 317343 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @11:30PM (#10612505)
      And the only person who's actually cited badmouthing the VC-1 codec is the head of Vbrick. Let's see what Vbrick is financially inolved with. Why, it's H.264 [vbrick.com]. (scroll down toward the bottom)

      I'm not saying that he's wrong or right, but *everyone* involved in this "who's better" fight has heavy financial incentive to say the other is bad.

  • Pseudo Letter to Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Eberlin ( 570874 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:12PM (#10609951) Homepage
    Finally finished and somewhat appropriate to post it here. Again, my apologies to the ones who wrote the original work...and no need to be upset y'all, it's supposed to be funny.

    (chorus sung by DiiDdo of band Yank'n Grope)
    My fee's all gone, I'm wondering why
    I sold my soul at all --
    The morning mail locked up my Windows,
    They all call me a troll.
    Even if they don't, everything I say
    Gets all hackers' eyes to roll --
    Still I tell me that it's not so bad,
    It's not so bad...

    Dear Bill, I wrote but you still ain't respondin'
    I left e-mail, my URL, and my home IP at the bottom
    I sent two bug reports last autumn -- you must not a got 'em
    There probably was a problem with hotmail or somethin
    Sometimes the packets take the scenic route when you route them
    but anyhoo, fsck it, what's been up? Man, how's Ballmer?
    Is he still a dancin' foo, screamin' "developer?"
    If I have a daughter, guess what I'ma call her --
    I'ma name her Clippy.
    I read about your XP SP2, I'm sorry.
    I had a friend bork his box over some bitchy driver problem
    I know you probably hear this everyday but I'm your biggest fan.
    I even got Software Assurance that the zealots called a scam.
    I got a room will all your certificates and manuals, man.
    I like the stuff you did with Java, too, that stuff was phat!
    Anyways, I hope you get this, man. Hit me back
    just to chat, truly yours, your biggest fan
    This is Dan.

    Dear Bill, you still ain't ack-ed my note. I hope you have a chance.
    I ain't mad -- I just think it's fscked up when the shizznit hit the fan.
    If you didn't want to fix the bugs through Trustworthy Computing
    you didn't have to, but you coulda posted a work-around for Matthew
    That's my kid bro, man, he's only eight years old
    Been a good boy, rebooted as he was told by you
    for years and you just said "No."
    That's pretty crappy, man, his drive was going idle.
    He wanted to be just like you, man! Now he gets more porn than I do!
    I ain't that mad, though, I just don't like bein lied to.
    Remember when we met in Vegas? I said that I'd write you
    And that I've always gots your back. See, man, patching is ok, in a way.
    I wouldn't have bothered either
    But my mom's machine got hosed and she's not a control-alt-deleter.
    I can't relate when people say you're doing wrong
    So when I have a crappy day, I flame away and bring it on
    'cause I don't really know shit else and get confused on what to press
    I even got wit blizzard and got Warcraft Battlechest
    Sometimes I get a troll to axe a seal to watch it bleed
    It's like adrenaline, that is until the game locks up on me.
    And when you rolled right over Real, man, I respect you cause you did it.
    The linux folks are jealous -- their uptime is 24/7
    but they don't know you like I do, Bill, no one does
    they don't know what it's like for systems like ours booting up
    You gotta write me, man. I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose.
    Sincerely yours, Dan -- P.S.
    I'm glad you beat up OS/2

    Dear Mister-I'm-Too-Good-To-Fix-Or-Patch-My-Bugs,
    this 'll be the last e-mail I ever send your ass
    It's been so long and Word's still bork -- I don't deserve it?
    I gotta upgrade to write letters?
    I almost switched down to Wordperfect!
    So this is my ogg file I'm sending you, I hope you hear it.
    I'm running firefox on the information superhighway
    Hey Bill, I clicked on Bonzi Buddy, will it install in my drive?
    You know that song by Shawn Colvin, it's called "Sunny Came Home"
    about that girl who came home with a box of tools and said that
    it's time for a few small repairs -- she came home with a vengeance?
    That's kinda how it is, I was one "rescue disk" from switching
    Now it's too late -- I'm with a million penguins now and happy
    and all I wanted was a lousy ack or a call
    I hope you know I trashed ALL of your cd's from my drawer.
    I loved XP and IE together, think about it --
    It's ruined somehow, I hope you can'

  • Open disk (Score:4, Interesting)

    by EdZ ( 755139 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:13PM (#10609955)
    Is MPEG 4 an open standard? Are there any open standards (Dirac maybe?) that are at an advanced enough stage of development to be used as an alternative?

    • Re:Open disk (Score:4, Informative)

      by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11@NOSpAm.gmail.com> on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:15PM (#10609972) Homepage Journal
      From TFA:
      Others believe that political infighting might make VC-1 a short-lived, interim industry standard that eventually gives way to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. That specification is an open video compression standard jointly developed by the International Telecommunication Union and MPEG members.

    • Re:Open disk (Score:5, Informative)

      by pchan- ( 118053 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:21PM (#10610011) Journal
      sure it's an open standard. anyone can buy the implementation specifications, and get the reference code for a marginal fee. but it uses patented methods, so even if you make your own implementation, you still have to pay the MPEG licensing authority (MPEG-LA) on their terms.

      • Re:Open disk (Score:5, Informative)

        by wmeyer ( 17620 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @03:20PM (#10610280)
        You're right about the need for license payments, but as an employee of a company that pays license fees to MPEG-LA now, I can tell you that in most cases that would affect readers of /., the fees are small enough that I think the bookkeeping costs MPEG-LA more than they collect. Over the last 5 years, I don't think our quarterlee fees have been much in excess of $100.00 per quarter.

    • Re:Open disk (Score:4, Insightful)

      by geg81 ( 816215 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:30PM (#10610050)
      Are there any open standards (Dirac maybe?) that are at an advanced enough stage of development to be used as an alternative?

      You've got to be kidding--the last thing the SMTPE and the motion picture industry wants is an open standard. They want something that is heavily patented because that gives them control. They just want the patent holders to be companies that can be pushed around by the content providers.

      The ideal standard for the SMTPE would be something that is heavily patented, where the patents are held by labs and companies too small to make a business out of their own inventions, small companies that are happy with scraps and handouts from the motion picture industry.

  • Well it's surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by marcello_dl ( 667940 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:13PM (#10609956) Homepage Journal
    A company the size of MS that cannot write a decent test suite. Incompetence or the need to keep the proposed standard as obscure as possible to stifle competition... or both?
    • both maybe.

      or just simple overpromising to get the deal(worked before so...).

    • Re:Well it's surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by upsidedown_duck ( 788782 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:18PM (#10609995)

      Microsoft's plan is probably to be the only implementor and to license that implementation to the suckers...er, manufacturers. Providing a half-assed test suite is a perfect way to delay them long enough to allow the plan to take shape.

      • There is a long industry tradition here. For example most RSA reference code has interesting "omissions". Classic example is MD4 for which the reference implementation does not work on 64 bit and big endian and has a number of code paths that are effectively if (1) {} without the else. That is besides lack of error checking and a few paths with NULL derefs in them. At the same time they were shipping software which had the MD4 transform, but was perfectly on Solaris (big endian) and Tru64 (big endian and 64
    • Most likely it's a fucked up schedule again. They come up with features, in the middle of the product cycle it becomes clear that all of them can't be implemented, they start cutting features. They cut about 1/4 of them, then 3/4 through the product cycle 1/4 more. And in the very end of it all, marketing comes up with an awesome idea to push this thing through a standards body. VPs are ecstatic, engineers swear and cringe, everyone hopes standards committee won't notice missing shit. Standards committee no

  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by __aavhli5779 ( 690619 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:14PM (#10609959) Journal
    What disturbs me is that a 'standards body' would've considered a completely closed, proprietary codec anyway. Patent-encumbered is one thing. Black-box is another. What were they thinking?

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Funny)

      by upsidedown_duck ( 788782 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:21PM (#10610013)
      What were they thinking?

      Sitting next to a billionaire feels really really cool.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:37PM (#10610086) Homepage Journal
      Probably they were thinking that, for their standard to be adopted, they needed the approval of an industry giant that has been known to create its own "standards" if the real standards don't suit it.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @03:38PM (#10610375)
      What were they thinking?


      That's the problem, they weren't thinking.

      You asked why a ".. 'standards body' would consider a completely closed, proprietary codec ...?" The answer is in the article:

      "Ironically, a Microsoft executive chaired the H.264 joint video team and successfully guided the group to the H.264 spec ratified at ITU-T in May 2003. Nevertheless, Microsoft has been promoting WMV9 as a proven codec that strikes a better balance between compression efficiency and computational efficiency than H.264."

      and

      " But now that the WMV9-based VC-1 has been put to the test in the arduous SMPTE standardization process, VC-1 is perceived as behind in quality and behind in licensing terms, compared to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, one source said. "

      Catch that? Microsoft railroaded the committee, while lying about WMV9's capabilities. Inspite of that behavior some committee members continue to be Microsoft sock puppets:

      "In short, industry players that have embraced VC-1 fear they may have to go back to Microsoft and pony up fees for a WMVx license in the future. MPEG's Koenen dismissed such a possibility. "Microsoft knows better than that," he said. "

      Ya, right. As PT Barnum said, "you can fool some of the people all of the time", an obvious reference to the SMPTE.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 )
      WMV9 isn't "completely closed" any more; MS submitted the bitstream specification to SMPTE.
    • What disturbs me is that a 'standards body' would've considered a completely closed, proprietary codec anyway.
      Compare it to voting machines or unfinished face recognition systems - there are a lot of clueless technology decisions being made on faith and wishful thinking.

  • Microsoft should lose this one (Score:5, Insightful)

    by upsidedown_duck ( 788782 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:14PM (#10609960)

    Windows Media Player would obviously play MPEG-4, but other platforms would not always have WMV9. MPEG-4 would be more ubiquitous, regardless of the "follow the winner" attitude people have about Microsoft. Microsoft really needs to be given the boot once and a while, and this is a good opportunity to do so.
    • No this would be implemented in hardware in the players.

      A side effect might be that Linux couldn't legally play the discs, but I don't know how that stacks up against people being able to play WMP files on mplayer with the Windows codecs...?
      • Legally, doing this is a grey area (it breaks the EULA). If mplayer ever become popular enough to threaten WMP, maybe Microsoft would take action, but until then, they can always resort to making their codec API so incredibly complex, DirectX, kernel and x86-tethered it would be impossible to reimplement or reverse engineer.
        • Legally, doing this is a grey area (it breaks the EULA).

          mplayer is, I believe, a European product. European anti-competition laws forbid tying the sale of one product to that of another in a different marketplace for any company that holds a monopoly in either (e.g. Microsoft). Therefore, this term in MS's EULA is unenfoceable in Europe.

  • Promising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:14PM (#10609961) Homepage Journal
    It all looks very promising, the amazing technology advancement is exciting, the quality will be truly outstanding, the article is very interesting, however the real question is: will we be able to watch our favourite movies legally using our favourite, free software in the future? Will we labeled "pirates" only becuase our otherwise legal technology is inconvenient for media conglomerates and proprietary software barons?

    • Re:Promising (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ScrewMaster ( 602015 )
      In answer to your question, the answer is Yes and it is already the case. We don't have to wait for a new Microsoft codec to be released in order to be slandered by both media conglomerates and, well, the media. Honest to God, every time I hear the phrases "rampant piracy" and "sinking profits" I want to go copy a CD or something. Sink this!

    • Re:Promising (Score:3, Insightful)

      by L7_ ( 645377 )
      The reason people are labeled "pirates" in this case is that they are not paying the commercial patent fees that are due to the various patent groups that own the media compression algorithms.

      Whats crazy is that how the MPEG4 standards work is open and understood, yet implementations are patent encumbered. Thats the reason you won't find FOSS software players: they can't implement the decoding process since it involves using the decompression algorithms.

      So I don't think that "pirate" is the correct term,

      • Pirate (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 )

        So I don't think that "pirate" is the correct term, since no copyright is being violated.

        Actually, "pirate" is not the correct term indeed, but because piracy is not being commited. A pirate is someone who robs or plunders at sea without a commission from a recognized sovereign nation, not someone who violate the copyright law. Acts of the former are called piracy. Acts of the latter are called copyright infringement.

        • Of course, even if you adopt the traditional definition of piracy in the scope of intellectual property law, most of what is being decried as piracy is in fact *not* piracy. Piracy in this scope is the mass publication for profit of something you represent to be an authorized distribution of the creator or rights-holder. The term applies to the Win98 CD my dad once bought from a sketchy parts store that had printed on it a warning that copying the CD was "illigal". It certainly doesn't apply in this case

      • Re:Promising (Score:3, Insightful)

        by HeghmoH ( 13204 )
        Whats crazy is that how the MPEG4 standards work is open and understood, yet implementations are patent encumbered.

        Why is this "crazy"? The entire point of the patent system is that you are required to disclose your methods in exchange for a limited monopoly on their use. A patented standard is necessarily going to be open for all to see, simply not for all to use.

    • Re:Promising (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      will we be able to watch our favourite movies legally using our favourite, free software in the future?

      What would make you think that would be a possibility in the future, when it isn't even the case today?

      None of the Unix MPEG-2 players are licensed, and you can bet that the CSS decryption is of questionable legality as well.

      • Very good point (Score:4, Informative)

        by Pan T. Hose ( 707794 ) on Sunday October 24, 2004 @12:36AM (#10612693) Homepage Journal

        will we be able to watch our favourite movies legally using our favourite, free software in the future?

        What would make you think that would be a possibility in the future, when it isn't even the case today? None of the Unix MPEG-2 players are licensed, and you can bet that the CSS decryption is of questionable legality as well.

        That is a very good point and that is precisely what makes me so concered. We haven't seen any patent attacks on Linux and free software yet, but as soon as Microsoft starts losing enough customers and money to Linux, we will see them.

        After all, they are not fools investing literally millions in their "defensive" patent porfolios. Just look at IBM. They only use their patents "defensively." But what does it mean? When SCO sued them, they instantly countersued with tens of patents. SCO being wrong suing IBM in the first place is irrelevant. They could do the same thing against almost anyone because everyone violates some of the bogus and obvious patents thay have. The point is that they have the power to do so. So does Microsoft. They have the power to attack if they need it. And that's very dangerous.

        And I am only talking about bogus patents right now, which in the case of Linux might cost anyone too much bad publicity or make the patents invalidated with the help of EFF, FSF or OSI, and only hurt the attacker in the long run. The very specific patents for modern audio and video codecs, and violating them to do exactly what they were designed for, is a completely different matter. They most probably wouldn't get invalidated in court. They will be a powerful weapon even for getting good publicity--"Linux was working only because those pirates stole our patented algorithms, without them it can't even play a movie, you should use Windows."

        You're right, we don't have today what I fear we won't have in the future. It is not possible to legally play an original, purchased DVD on Linux. Would you believe that I still don't have a DVD drive because of that?

        This is something which we have to address before it starts to be a problem. Because using patented algorithms in free software only makes the software vulnerable to legal attacks, and this is the only kind of attack that can be directed against free software. Most of people don't care about them because we haven't seen any attacks yet. Yet.

        By the way, thanks for posting a very good comment [slashdot.org] in the Free Software Friendly Graphics Card discussion. When I was criticising the lack of support for that project and the lack of understanding why is it so important [slashdot.org], I hadn't read you post, because I gave up after reading the top half of +5 comments which was basically saying "bad idea" which I quite honestly couldn't understand.

  • Surprising? (Score:5, Informative)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <.moc.liamtoh. .ta. .l3gnaerif.> on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:15PM (#10609971) Homepage
    Microsoft used shark-style tactics using his monopolistic power to get what it wanted and crush opposition... film at 11. Is this even news?

    And if you RTFA, you'll see that "On the assumption that WMV9 was destined to become an industry standard, Microsoft convinced both the Blu-ray Disc Association and the DVD Forum to include it as a mandatory video compression format (along with MPEG-2 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) for next-generation high-definition DVD formats. Now, there is speculation that delays or licensing problems for VC-1 could prompt either -- or both -- of the DVD industry groups to simply delete the Microsoft technology from their specifications."

    So it's not like WMV9 was the only codec incorporated in the standard anyway. Microsoft overpromised it seems, at least on the feature set. But cheated and lied?

    • Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by geg81 ( 816215 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:22PM (#10610019)
      Microsoft used shark-style tactics using his monopolistic power to get what it wanted and crush opposition... film at 11. Is this even news?

      No, that's not news. What's news is that an important industry standards body noticed in time and is trying to prevent it.

      Microsoft overpromised it seems, at least on the feature set. But cheated and lied?

      I think if you "overpromise" in order to gain business advantages worth billions of dollars, that counts as "cheated and lied". In fact, it might count as "fraud".

      Maybe we have gotten a little too jaded in this industry, but this kind of behavior should not be acceptable.

    • Re:Surprising? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by smiff ( 578693 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:38PM (#10610089)
      Microsoft overpromised it seems, at least on the feature set. But cheated and lied?

      This shouldn't surprise anyone. This is how Microsoft Bill Gates built his business. He told IBM that he had his BASIC implementation all ready (in reality he had barely started). He told IBM that he had his operating system all ready (in reality, he ended up buying it from someone else and modifying it to fit IBM's specifications).

      Bill Gates seemed quite proud of those feats when he later bragged about them. Microsoft has made similar promises regarding Windows 95, Longhorn, etc.. This is the way Microsoft does business.

      The only surprise here is that Microsoft may face some pitiful little ramifications for their actions.

      • Re:Surprising? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Wylfing ( 144940 )
        This is how Microsoft Bill Gates built his business...Bill Gates seemed quite proud of those feats when he later bragged about them.

        This isn't too uncommon in the consulting and business services world, where you see these kinds of deal-makers brought in for the purpose of getting a new company off the ground. These guys will say or do anything to close a deal. A real classic is hiring temps so it looks like you have a staff and a genuine address. Telling someone you've got a product today when it's never

  • Does *anyone* want Windows Media anyway? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by byolinux ( 535260 ) * on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:15PM (#10609978) Journal
    Ballmer and co just don't seem to *get* media, in my opinion.

    Now I'd like a fair deal for musicians and consumers, and right now iTunes is the market leader. Why? I think Apple seems to "get it" a lot more than other companies do.

    From what I've seen of Windows Media and DRM, it's not clever, and worse yet, it's clumsy.

    Does Microsoft have to own everything? Why don't they just play nice for once and use something vaguely standard, like MPEG 4 and AAC, or FLAC.

    Theora promises to be really nice, but until then can anyone point me in the direction of a decent, free software, video codec (ideally with some nice Creative Commons tie in and even better, something I can give to my Mac using video encoders)

  • Thank God (Score:3, Insightful)

    by marktaw.com ( 816752 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:18PM (#10609993) Homepage
    In short, industry players that have embraced VC-1 fear they may have to go back to Microsoft and pony up fees for a WMVx license in the future.

    Thank god someone finally recognized MS's licensing scheme for what it is: highway robbery. Basing a standard on it is a sure way to strangle an industry.

  • I've delt with the Windows Media people before... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:18PM (#10609996)
    We were going to do a streaming media demo over a wireless data link. They said it would be no problem. (Codec choice was out of my hands, but I had to write the client) I wanted to know how we were going to get data from our custom wireless data decoder into Windows Media Player. Their answer? Wireless client -> Windows Media Codec -> Windows Media Server -> Windows Media Player. All on seperate computers, all running Server 2000. Our final solution? Wireless client -> File. Open file in Media Player. Same computer. Done. From my perspective marketing drives Windows Media, not good technology.

  • Why on earth would anyone use WMV or WMA? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The first and only time I ever downloaded anything in these formats, I was redirected to some M$ site upon opening the file, stating that no more than 10 people could use it (!) I was like WTF! Ever since then, I will never EVER use WMVs or WMAs. No thanks, I'll stick with less obscure formats that don't try to put in copy-protection crap.

  • AVC/H.264 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aztech ( 240868 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:22PM (#10610017)
    If WM9 can't even compete with MPEG4 LC, which is relatively established now, it will get eaten alive by AVC/H.264 [wikipedia.org], not that MPEG-LA help themselves by encumbering a promising technology with patent and royalty complexities, by the time they get a satisfactory resolution they hand people like MS time to bribe and cajole a less worthy codec onto hapless consumers, and eventually studios of course.

    MS is like my dog, who I've nick-named monopoly, he was promisng to start with then he jumps up to bite me in the ass given any excuse. He eats all the food out there and demands more resources, not to mention his lack of standards cause bad conflictions with other four legged beasts (such as the beast).

  • Funny Stuff (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:24PM (#10610034) Homepage Journal
    Apparently, a highly technical standard body is harder to snowjob than the usual clueless consumers.

    Or politicians.

    LK
  • This is rather emblamatic of the differences between the way Apple and Microsoft approach any technical problem.

    Apple asks: "How can we make the best product possible for the customer and still make money at it?"

    Microsoft asks: "How can we use this to reinforce our monopoly and still get end-users to swallow it?"

    All Microsoft's DRM and Codec schemes have seemed to design to "embrace and extend" to further their Windows monopoly. Apple's have been designed to be the best they possibly can, with just enough DRM to satisfy their media partners. It's a big difference, and it shows up in everything they do.

    • Wrong: VC-1 does not include DRM! (Score:5, Informative)

      by kylef ( 196302 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:55PM (#10610160)
      All Microsoft's DRM and Codec schemes have seemed to design to "embrace and extend" to further their Windows monopoly. Apple's have been designed to be the best they possibly can, with just enough DRM to satisfy their media partners. It's a big difference, and it shows up in everything they do.

      This just shows how little you actually know about this subject. VC-1 is a compression standard only. It does not include DRM features, or any user-interaction features for that matter. This is very clear if you have been following this standardization process at all.

      Oh, and by the way, what Apple codecs are you referring to that have been designed to be so superior to WMV9? Please tell. (And don't say "Quicktime" because that is a format, not a codec.)

  • Preserving our culture? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MisterP ( 156738 ) * on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:35PM (#10610075)
    TV, movies and music make up a large part of our culture and here we have a corporation trying to railroad a standards commitee into accepting their product as the standard we will use preserve the sounds and images of our generation. That sounds pretty dorky, but it's true.

    This makes with the BBC and Vorbis guys are doing seem a lot more important.

  • Isn't it ironic? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krray ( 605395 ) * on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:44PM (#10610110)
    There's a reason my entire movie library (ripped from owned DVD's which are stored away -- just like my CD collection now :) ... has the .MP4 extension at this time. There's also a reason that the entire library resides on Linux partitions and was created using a Mac. Microsoft has enough money. They get $0 now.

  • Apparently, a highly technical standard body is ha (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @02:54PM (#10610152)
    Apparently, a highly technical standard body is harder to snowjob than the usual clueless consumers.

    For the moment. The bar for what is considered "highly technical" is lowered all the time. Consider the following:

    1) I've met people with Master's Degrees in CompSci who are clueless about coding. Maybe this "has been the case for a while", but surely it hasn't consistently been the case since the birth of CS as a discipline?
    2) 20 years ago, I would have been a mediocre Unix SA... today, I'm practically deified by 90% of so-called SAs.

    There will always be a few amazing brainiac engineer-types, and a few hard-theory CS geniuses (a la Knuth), and a few master hackers who can code x86, PPC, SPARC, and z80 assembly in their sleep... but their percentages among society will get smaller and smaller. Within 50 years, expect (e.g.) the IEEE, or the ACM, or whatever, to have devolved into organizations no more technical or consumer-minded than the RIAA or MPAA...
  • from TFA:

    I also think Microsoft greatly underestimated what it takes to develop WMV9 into an industry standard and to ensure its interoperability." Koenen added, "It is a very complex technical process. It just takes time -- even without politics"

    Last month I saw WMV9 covered in the only 2 microsoft booths at the IBC conference [ibc.org](amsterdam).
    Microsoft really made me believe that wmv9 was mature enough to be an industry standard.

    Was I assimilated by microsoft or is wmv9 not that bad at all?

    • I think just like the Xbox this is new territory for Microsoft and they are going to fumble a lot before they figure it out. 5 years ago if you mentioned Microsoft and consoles in the same sentence no one would have made the connection and now it's part of the console world.

  • WMV9 is an additional codec not a replacement... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 23, 2004 @03:12PM (#10610232)
    I didn't RTFA but, if I remember correctly, the OP has some major misinformation in his post.

    It was my impression that WMV9 was approved by the HD DVD groups to be supported in ADDITION to the MPEG4 codec. It didn't REPLACE the MPEG4 codec.

    Misinformation on Slashdot -- who'd-a-thought?
    • The disc makers can choose to use anyone they want, but the PLAYERS have to support all of them to be compliant with the standard. Which is $$$ to MS, even if no one chooses to use WMV 9 on their discs, it makes the format easier for MS to sell.
  • Didn't Terminator 3 come with a special Windows Media 9 High Def version or did it just fall out of the sky and into my hands? Didn't MS demonstrate the HD capabilities by hosting WM9 high def video somewhere on their site?

  • Codec Performance (Score:3, Informative)

    by alanbs ( 784491 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @03:53PM (#10610437)
    Look at this link [extremetech.com] to see the performance differences between some codecs. I hope it is just the quicktime implimentation of mpeg4 that is crappy. What about Divx?
  • Apparently, a highly technical standard body is harder to snowjob than the usual clueless consumers.

    Damn!

  • Theora? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dwheeler ( 321049 ) on Saturday October 23, 2004 @07:48PM (#10611514) Homepage Journal
    It'd be nice if they gave Theora [theora.org] a shot. It looks like a lot of work has to go into preparing Microsoft's codec -- why not work on one that has no licensing problems at all, if you have to do that? The code is available now, which is more than you can say for this alternative.

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