Question re problems with .wmv for Macs

Dan Euritt · April 26th, 2005, 04:23 PM

as content creators, it is our responsibility to educate our customers about internet codecs and platforms that deliver the best quality at the lowest bitrate, with the greatest player penetration, a platform that has a real working drm solution that is widely accepted... you should never screw your customers over because of platform bigotry.

is anyone out here using digital rights management to sell their internet video? do you want your content to be stolen and pirated all over the 'net? of course not... so you won't be able to use the apple drm "solution", because it was cracked a long time ago... on top of that, it's capabilities don't begin to compare to the microsoft drm, which is still secure.

so why would anybody want to pimp an unsecure internet video platform like qt off on their fellow forum members?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ernest House

http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/06/11/streaming/index.php?redirect=1087152097000.

the author of that worthless piece of rhetoric is also the editor of macCentral news, and a writer for macworld publications... hardly an impartial source of unbiased information, lol.

the dv video standard is royalty-free, but you must pay licensing fees to mpegla for mpeg4, just like you would pay royalties for using the windows media format... so it's o.k. for apple to promote a standard that people have to pay for, but not microsoft? get a grip on reality.

and speaking of cellphones, apple also has patents in the mpeg21 area that they intend to make a lot of money off of, by controlling the standard... no different than what microsoft is doing.

perhaps you don't want to do business with a company because of it's business tactics? you better educate yourself about apple.

apple has a long history of screwing over it's business partners and dealers for big $$, check the links for more info... and now they are threatening free speech by suing website owners:
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/t...20050316.shtml
http://tellonapple.com/
http://www.macobserver.com/columns/t...st/990820.html

Les Wilson · April 26th, 2005, 05:57 PM

Dan wrote:
"the author of that worthless piece of rhetoric is also the editor of macCentral news, and a writer for macworld publications... hardly an impartial source of unbiased information"

The article reported on analysis from industry analysts Frost & Sullivan and Gartner. The article author and your opinion of him is not relevant.

The discussion is about standards. MSFT participated in the ISO group that created MPEG-4 so it's wierd you keep talking about Apple. MSFT is not licensing a standard. They're trying to license a proprietary format. Their track record is to do it with platform hostile licensing.

Licensing patents for implementing standards is SOP. The format is license free and all have equal access to the specs. Good examples are VoIP and your cell phone. Chock full of technology that has to be licensed. Nothing wrong with that. It's a matter of equal access and accessibility. If the internet video format or DRM is owned by a single company, you have a problem. Especially when it's a twice convicted abusive monopoly.

Standards are all about freedom because there's freedom of choice.

Dan Euritt · April 27th, 2005, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ernest House

The article reported on analysis from industry analysts Frost & Sullivan and Gartner. The article author and your opinion of him is not relevant.

the author deliberately ignored all other relevant factual data in order to twist the truth to suit his mac platform fanaticism... that's what he gets paid to do.

it's really not much different than what we've already seen in this thread with that malfunctioning 2,000 pc npd "survey", pretending that it was factual info that truely represented 822 million computers.

ignoring apple's key patents in the mpeg21 area won't help your case, either... apple wants to take over, look at the scope of their ambitions:

"MPEG21
Skipping a few numbers, we get to the last of the brewing standards – the MPEG-21 Multimedia Framework. MPEG21 seeks to let content distributors have complete control over content at all parts of the delivery chain and on all kinds of networks and devices. The basic idea is that digital media content is broken down into digital items...

...Perhaps the MPEG21 feature that has received the most attention is its DRM (Digital Rights/Restrictions Management) system. To maintain control over the dissemination and use of digital content, MPEG21 aims to assert total control over usage. Every digital item has granular rights and permissions associated with it, and every user who interacts with it – consumers or content providers – are granted specific rights according to their role.

Total control over the file's behavior for any purpose on any device or network, along with extensive restrictions and role-based authorization, will result in two possibilities. One is an ubiquitous and standardized capacity to do eCommerce with digital media in any environment – be it server-based, peer-to-peer, or "sneaker net." The other is that, without proper legal and technical safeguards, you also may be granting too much power to the content owner to control the way the media is consumed.

Copyright ©2003 Streaming Media Inc. an Information Today Inc. company. All rights reserved." -http://stream.uen.org/medsol/digvid/html/2B_mediaarchmpeg1.html

Les Wilson · April 27th, 2005, 06:29 PM

The fact that MPEG21 is being done in a standards body puts it on the moral high ground. Unlike proprietary closed MSFT approaches with platform hostile licensing.

The internet and our communications infrastructure is built on patented IP, licensing and standards. Whining about legal and ethical protection of intellectual property falls on deaf ears. It's silly actually. I'm not even sure you understand the Streamin Media Inc article you cite. It's clearly describing control given to content owners which is what you said you wanted in your last post.

Dan Euritt · April 28th, 2005, 12:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ernest House

The format is license free and all have equal access to the specs.

no, it is NOT free, here are the licensing costs for h.264, for example: http://www.vialicensing.com/products...nse.terms.html

you pay microsoft directly for wmv codec licensing, or you pay a group of companies for h.264 codec licensing... or you pay apple indirectly for mpeg21 licensing... you still must pay, it is NOT FREE!

microsoft has spent a fortune developing proprietary codecs and digital rights management, they deserve to be paid for creating the best standards in the business... crippled standards like the apple drm trash that got cracked early on are a dend end when it comes to developing internet commerce... are you foolish enuf to think that hollywood is going to risk it's assets on apple drm? how many internet movie download sites use that garbage? they all use microsoft drm.

if it wasn't for microsoft, there would be no drm/media player solution available for serious internet commerce.

George Ellis · April 29th, 2005, 06:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ernest House

The fact that MPEG21 is being done in a standards body puts it on the moral high ground. Unlike proprietary closed MSFT approaches with platform hostile licensing.

The internet and our communications infrastructure is built on patented IP, licensing and standards. Whining about legal and ethical protection of intellectual property falls on deaf ears. It's silly actually. I'm not even sure you understand the Streamin Media Inc article you cite. It's clearly describing control given to content owners which is what you said you wanted in your last post.

VC1 has also been put to a standards body. Just because something is created by committee does not make it better or give it "moral high ground". It just means it took twice as long to approve and has everyone's pet components in it. What you really want is something that has been peer reviewed. That improves it.

Les Wilson · April 30th, 2005, 01:45 PM

Sorry for the delay. Been in LA.

Dan, you're right about the licensing fees. I never meant to say what I wrote. When I wrote "The format is license free and all have equal access to the specs." I bobbled two sentence fragments when editing. I meant to counterpose the player and format license to this affect:
"the player is license free to downloaders and all parties interested in creating products around the technology have equal access to the specs."

However, your points about MSFT deserving license fees is a strawman and a bit hippocritical. I nor anyone else implied MSFT should give anything away. You however, seem to complain about Apple getting license fees for standards they contribute their hard earned technology into and then you turn around and state MSFT has a right to charge fees.

Standards are not necessarily free to implementers. That's the ecosystem upon which the internet and other infrastructure works. The important thing is that they are available equally to enable a free market and not controlled a single player that is a competitor to most.

April 26th, 2005, 05:57 PM	#92
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	Dan wrote: "the author of that worthless piece of rhetoric is also the editor of macCentral news, and a writer for macworld publications... hardly an impartial source of unbiased information" The article reported on analysis from industry analysts Frost & Sullivan and Gartner. The article author and your opinion of him is not relevant. The discussion is about standards. MSFT participated in the ISO group that created MPEG-4 so it's wierd you keep talking about Apple. MSFT is not licensing a standard. They're trying to license a proprietary format. Their track record is to do it with platform hostile licensing. Licensing patents for implementing standards is SOP. The format is license free and all have equal access to the specs. Good examples are VoIP and your cell phone. Chock full of technology that has to be licensed. Nothing wrong with that. It's a matter of equal access and accessibility. If the internet video format or DRM is owned by a single company, you have a problem. Especially when it's a twice convicted abusive monopoly. Standards are all about freedom because there's freedom of choice.

April 27th, 2005, 06:29 PM	#94
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	The fact that MPEG21 is being done in a standards body puts it on the moral high ground. Unlike proprietary closed MSFT approaches with platform hostile licensing. The internet and our communications infrastructure is built on patented IP, licensing and standards. Whining about legal and ethical protection of intellectual property falls on deaf ears. It's silly actually. I'm not even sure you understand the Streamin Media Inc article you cite. It's clearly describing control given to content owners which is what you said you wanted in your last post.

April 30th, 2005, 01:45 PM	#97
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	Sorry for the delay. Been in LA. Dan, you're right about the licensing fees. I never meant to say what I wrote. When I wrote "The format is license free and all have equal access to the specs." I bobbled two sentence fragments when editing. I meant to counterpose the player and format license to this affect: "the player is license free to downloaders and all parties interested in creating products around the technology have equal access to the specs." However, your points about MSFT deserving license fees is a strawman and a bit hippocritical. I nor anyone else implied MSFT should give anything away. You however, seem to complain about Apple getting license fees for standards they contribute their hard earned technology into and then you turn around and state MSFT has a right to charge fees. Standards are not necessarily free to implementers. That's the ecosystem upon which the internet and other infrastructure works. The important thing is that they are available equally to enable a free market and not controlled a single player that is a competitor to most.