“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.
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