Posted on: Tuesday, July 2, 2002
Simplifying multimedia won't be an easy task
By Gene Steinberg
Gannett News Service
A new multimedia standard, MPEG-4, is poised to take the headaches out of the complex process of downloading audio and video from the Internet. Or maybe not.
As companies debate licensing provisions and royalties, competing and perhaps superior formats threaten to derail efforts to simplify the delivery of multimedia content.
Today, if you want to see a movie trailer on your PC, you need to have the correct player. Microsoft has Windows Media Player, Apple Computer has QuickTime and Real Networks has its RealOne Player. Although each player can handle several multimedia formats, they also support their maker's own proprietary format, which the other players don't support. This creates a confusing and frustrating situation for many PC users.
MPEG-4 (MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group) was designed as the great savior, a universally accepted standard for video that delivers high quality with smaller files. This would be a boon for speed-challenged Internet connections, such as dial-up modems, and handheld devices, such as cell phones.
Frank Casanova, Apple's director of QuickTime marketing, explains that providers of multimedia content, such as movie trailers, now have to produce files in several formats to accommodate the various incompatible players. "We think that's wrong, that's broken and that's indicative of an immature or nascent industry. MPEG-4 will be the great equalizer. It will allow content providers to encode once (to MPEG-4) and stream everywhere. One player will be able to receive the broadest range of content and the content will sound better."
But two of the biggest companies in digital media don't agree.
Michael Aldridge, product manager for the Microsoft Windows Digital Media Division, said the company's forthcoming "Corona" technology, which will appear in its Windows Media Player this summer, is twice as efficient. He added that Corona will allow high-quality videos to be sent out using roughly half the bandwidth as MPEG-4, which benefits users with slower connections.
Real Networks' newest video technology can transmit video with similar quality as MPEG-4 in a file half as large, according to Sharon Goldstein, the company's MPEG-4 guru.
Despite the skepticism about making MPEG-4 a universal standard, Apple is offering a "preview" version of its QuickTime 6 multimedia software with MPEG-4 support. Microsoft says MPEG-4 support in its latest Windows Media Player and Real Networks players can be enhanced to support the standard with the help of third-party plug-ins.
Perhaps the biggest factor that's held up the widespread use of MPEG-4 is how to license the technology. Apple, for example, has held off releasing the final version of QuickTime 6 because it feels the prospective fees, which include per-use fees, are too onerous, while other companies have pursued development of their own alternatives.
