“Microsoft Corp.’s effort to shoulder its way into consumer electronics, movies and TV broadcasting worldwide by proposing its proprietary Windows Media Video 9 to the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers as an industry-standard codec seemed like a coup. But the standardization of WMV9 has not gone as smoothly as the software giant expected. The process, begun last year, appears bogged down by infighting and general distrust, with no clear sign of when VC-1 – the SMPTE standard based on WMV9 – will reach fruition,” Junko Yoshida reports for EE Times.
“It certainly won’t be within the time frame outlined by Patrick Griffis, Microsoft’s director of worldwide media standards, who predicted at the time of the donation, in September 2003, that WMV9 would be an SMPTE standard within six to 12 months,” Yoshida reports. “A number of technical and political issues surrounding VC-1 have reportedly caused growing frustration and constant bickering in the SMPTE engineering community. In addition, licensing issues loom large, and some fear that royalties may prove too expensive for the SMPTE codec to be usable.”
Yoshida reports, “The uncertainty has raised questions about the future of Microsoft’s Windows Media Video codec. 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.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: From our fortune cookie today: “Big mistakes sometimes fix themselves.”
Go H.264 and Quicktime!
“Junko” is a very discriptive name for everything M$
You speak wisdom Grasshopper!
Just say NO to Microsoft
Pass the word.
QuickTime is definitly the future.
I guess this is the kind of thing that happens when you have a bad reputation. I’m glad, this will only be better for consumers and the industry at large. We don’t need MS’s hands in this cookie jar.
Amen to that, Smithy.
Open standards or bust! That should be the industry’s motto.
1 Micro$oftopoly is EVIL incarnate.
2 Just say no to Windoze.
3 There is no such thing as secure Micro$oftopoly software.
Quicktime hahaha
without bashing anything i will say that the whole industry is in for a change, and Apple, it seems is riding the + not the -. Now that we are in the information age and everyone can find out for themselves, the old story of, “it came on my system so it must be good” is over. Long live consumer choice. Long live Apple!
Good to see MDN reading their mail. I knew this article would interest MDN patrons and bring joy to those who worried about having MS in our DVD players. Glad that some regulatory committees appreciate high quality and hold companies to their promises, and kicks them out on their ass when they come up short and lie about it.
Isn’t it to soon to be switching to a new DVD format? Has the life of the DVD ended?
-paul
quicktime’s not the future, thankfully.
it doesn’t work well cross-platform and is still a closed player.
h.264 is good tho… but as an open standard.
school girl+paul:
H.264 and the others are meant for HD DVD, not regular DVD’s.
kloiuj:
What problems have you had with cross-platforms?
“Still a closed player”
What would you call Windows Media Player or Real Player? Open??
“h.264 is good tho… but as an open standard.”
What else do you think H.264 is?
H.264 has always been an open standard, it’s just that Apple has been the only one of the big three that has truly backed it.
“delete (the) Microsoft” is an outstanding phrase.
I simply cannot get Windows Media Player to work on any of my Apple computers, and have tried everything.
So… I’ve given up as I notice that many many websites are now offering parallel content in QuickTime.
Too bad though, I just can’t see some websites’ streaming media as they are only Windows based.
I’ve noticed that after prebinding the system, Windows Media Player files refuse to work in any web browser. Reinstalling the WMP package doesn’t seem to help. To fix this problem, you have to download a WMP file to your hard drive and open it (it will tell you that it’s launching WMP for the first time, etc.). After that, it again works within a web browser.
Has anyone else noticed this?
WMV9?
Plays for sure!
Only on Weendose.
Microsnot — root it out and flick it away.
Quicktime is p.o.s.