Microsoft Codec Required For Blu-Ray Players 490
dmayle writes "According to ExtremeTech, the Blu-Ray Disc Association (which consists of many big names, like Sony, Philips, and Pioneer) has decided to mandate Microsoft's VC-1 video codec. With HD-DVD incorporating Microsoft's patented video codecs as well, what will happen to the state of media players on Open Source? (Here's an additional source for Blu-Ray info)."
MSFT media domination begins? (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft will maintain its neutral position in supporting the emerging high definition video formats, said Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows Media division, in a statement.
MSFT will remain "neutral" as long as they are getting paid royalties to use the codec in the design. This will likely mean that Open Source alternatives will be shutout although with other technologies OSS has been able to make its way around those roadblocks.
How long until the MPAA gives in or will yet ANOTHER media format be created that won't include MSFT or OSS?
They're doing what now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Beta-Ray (Score:1, Interesting)
Not much meat... (Score:1, Interesting)
What prevents the OSS community from developing it's own codec and getting approved the same way M$ has done?
What about Dolby Digital? (Score:4, Interesting)
Incrediably Short sighted (Score:2, Interesting)
HD-DVD Foramt and Apple. (Score:1, Interesting)
unless I am missing something here or apple is blowing smoke.. whats the deal...
am I even talking about the same topic?
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jun/
what does that press release refer too then?
comments?
Prediction: blu-ray for movies will die (Score:3, Interesting)
2- Royalties jack up the price of things
3- There is still plenty of time for bickering and delay to kill this a-la-Digital-Audio-Tape.
Re:What will happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Chinese manufacturers (Score:5, Interesting)
With all these codecs on board i'd imagine it's a lot more than for regular DVD, and seeing the Chinese manufacturers attitude towards this they'll just go right ahead with their own patent-free platform. Hollywood will ignore them, at first, then they'll panic like mad knowing that a couple of billion users can only buy pirated copies of their films. Brilliant, way to go.
not exclusive, but lucrative (Score:3, Interesting)
Other codecs can also run. There might be pricing pressure on manufacturers to exclude the other, non-mandated codecs. Just like the PC "bundling" coup that drove Microsoft to their monopoly position. Blu-Ray needs at least one required codec to be a stable target for media delivery. By requiring Microsoft's codec, they've pushed Microsoft's monopoly-perpetuation strategy into the wider world of consumer TV.
kids not reading subtitles (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:How is this news? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's important because if you want to build an HD-DVD (and now Blu-Ray DVD) player, you have to support all the codecs specified by the format. You only have a choice when you're a content producer deciding which codec to use. You can't just build a player and decide "Well, I like MPEG but I don't like Microsoft, so I'll omit the VC-9 codec." If you do that, your player won't get certified. And of course, users will complain when their VC-9 encoded discs won't play on your player.
So now what do you do if you're building, say, a Linux player? Now you have to acquire IP rights from not only the MPEG people, but also from Microsoft. Think that'll be easy?
Yes, this will be reverse-engineered in some part of the world which is not dominated by the Corporate/Government oligarchy that exists in the US. In fact, the xine/mplayer stuff can probably handle it today. But you can be sure that both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray will carry a brand new scrambling system as well. Perhaps DVD Jon will crack it, but don't count on it happening quickly.
Nothing to see - Move along (Score:1, Interesting)
- Microsoft Blu-Ray Codec appears in first manufactured unit
- (Three days before previous article) Microsoft Blu-Ray Codec implementation hacked by [group|bright individual name] in [some northern European country].
- Microsoft pressures [appropriate government] to arrest the evil doer, sell him/her into slavery, raze their house to the ground, and sue everyone who downloaded the sourcecode.
- Massive (though largely unnoticed by general population) protests about the fate of [bright lad/lassie from northern European country]. Important statements by ACLU, EFF
- Lengthly legal battle begins
- Thoroughly illegal, but widely circulated OSS implementation of Blu-Ray appears as a plugin for mplayer/xine
- Storm settles down as MS is (one hopes) struck down yet again by a multiplicity of courts, which does not prevent MS from ranting about "evil OSS pirates"
- Meanwhile, a new compression codec is invented that allows compression of HD-DVD onto a regular DVD (or CD), a superpowerful DivX
- Said codec is also included into mplayer/xine
- New generation of ripped movies appears on P2P networks, with ripping tools first written for Windows, of course.
- The Enterprise continues on its five-year mission.
What will happen to Open Source players? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They're doing what now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some third company could pay the license and write a closed source plugin for that open source media player, and sell the plugin. Although the third company would probably be run out of business by the screaming masses shouting "your plugin is a derivative work therefor it must be made open source!" So maybe they would write an open source interface to the closed source codec. But people would still whine and bitch because they can't have it for free.
Attack of the moronic Linux Zealots! (Score:1, Interesting)
If you folks could open your eyes for just a few seconds and realize that in many cases, open source software, codecs, etc are NOT superior to their commercial alternatives (and in many cases are quite inferior - just compare Symantec Ghost to DD for instance), the world would be a better place. Just because something is free doesn't make it good. Microsoft video codecs have a long history of being superior to just about anything on the market (especially in terms of quality vs. filesize).
Also, just because it's from a commercial vendor does NOT mean it would include DRM of Death. (For the records: despite my support of MSFT, DRM is evil)
Re:Mandated for hardware, not software (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:MSFT media domination begins? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bad: MPEG2 is MUCH better (Score:3, Interesting)
The draw-back to new CODECs? HDTV was SUPPOSED to standardize on MPEG2, not because it was the best, but because it was pretty good when it came out and would be cheap to implement by the changeover in a few years.
Remember, televisions are going to start having to ship with HDTV decoders (err, did have to start shipping as of a few months ago, a certain percentage of sets), and they don't want to include OTA without CableCard...
This means that within a few years, all new sets will ship with HDTV decoders, which includes, an MPEG2 decoder. Therefore, the manufacturers should start including Firewire.
A wonderful day was nearly upon us, Firewire for EVERYTHING but videogame systems. We were going to be able to use a basic remote instead of $200-$800 programmable remotes that depend upon screwy macros.
Instead, we're going to lose the Firewire stereo, and instead suffer with messes of cables and macros...
Sure HDMI offers some ease of use, but not the beauty of Firewire.
The AV-HD or whatever it was called was brilliant... it was a harddrive in a box that supported the decryption/encryption of HD from OTA sources... Your television could manage it.
Instead, before the HDTV mainstream adoption (those of us with sets are still 5%), we're already abandonning MPEG2...
It would have been nice if the FIRST round of HD gear could all be MPEG2... We could have gone with fancier codecs with the NEXT replacement, but oh no, we're getting trashed before it began.
I have over 100+ wires behind my entertainment center, I dreamed of cutting down to 8...
Alex
Re:Great! (Score:1, Interesting)
The quality, frankly, blew. There were green artifacts everywhere.
I, for one, would rather see 10-bit 4:2:2 or better codecs at a high bitrate (20-25 mbps) anyway, rather than focussing so much effort on cutting bitrate.
Cutting bitrates means you are getting creative with how much frequency information you throw away, but doesn't that seem backward? The whole point of HDTV is to get more pixels, which means *higher* frequency information than you could display otherwise. Instead we're all hell-bent on quantizing it all away with all these DCT-style algorithms.
Re:Chinese manufacturers (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't see this as an issue at all. EVD devices would likely be cheap, since they'd be oriented towards the Chinese market, and would therefore likely be popular in the entire Asian rim of the Pacific.
Which in turn means a huge market, either legitimate, or otherwise. Movies in format xx would be dubbed or transcoded to EVD by the pirate market.
I always wonder if the Chinese stanards are an attempt not at market control/freedom from royalties, but actually a form of information control. If EVD is cheapest, it can win in the market, and the government can control what gets released internally on EVD.
I've always thought that DVD regions were a form of that as well -- what's the deal with countries as proximate as Japan, China and Viet Nam being in *three* different regions? Why is China in its own region? Why have different regions for Western Europe *and* Russia/Eastern Europe, despite EU membership spanning that divide?
I'm sure the standard was in development during the cold war and those regional codings reflected political wills -- no worries to Soviet or Chinese censors about evil outside influences, since supposedly their players wouldn't even play outside content.
I know we're told its about release timing and regional marketing, but it smells like politics to me.
Re:What is NOT trivial... (Score:3, Interesting)
Another note: VHS is still popular because it is the only medium people can record on. Now that DVD player prices have dropped to obscene lows in price, where manufacturers are only making a few dollars proffit on a player, a DVD recorder (for regular people to use to record HDTV broadcasts), will be the next thing to hit the mass market.
I know there are tons of legal hassels, and no doubt lawyers on both sides of the debate will make off with huge sums of cash. But in the end, this is the only avenue left open for profit and exploitation by hardware makers, and therefore, eventually, is where the market is going to go. This will, of course, ensure that DVD becomes the entrenched standard for even longer.
All of this will piss off movie execs, who will whine and moan about piracy, at the same time as sales for cheaply produced discs will continue to boost profits year after year. Really, I just can't understand some people. I can only imagine how much profits on DVD's will increase once studios realize they can publish DVD's without paying licenses to MacroVision. After all, it will have no effect on Piracy (anyone who wants can get around it anyhow), so why pay for it?
Note: The above post contains forward looking statements that reflect the personal opinion of the author only. Any resemblance to what will happen in the future is purely coincidental.
Re:Why not MPEG-2? Compression efficiency! (Score:3, Interesting)