podslug.com Blog

More On Codec Silos

July 10th, 2006

On July 10, 2006, I posted this:

More on “codec silos” … we are thinking about short term user issues (installation) but we should also keep in mind the longer term issues if any one vendor makes it so easy that they force a lock-in on their proprietary format.

I think that our only hope is for Apple and RealNetworks to create a completely interoperable IPTV stack based upon the MPEG LA standard of H264 in MP4 or 3GP over RTSP or HTTP. We need two strong vendors to drive this effort together. When this happens Microsoft will eventually be forced to add this standard IPTV support to their media player and then we will have a good solution that will work out of the box for most consumers regardless of OS and browser or device.

If Microsoft just simply added support for ISMA standard MPEG4 codecs and formats these problems would go away for consumers. It is amazing that they have to push Windows Media format at the exclusion of the standard rather than letting it compete on its technical merits. Adopting standards would really improve the consumer experience with MS products. They are holding back the general IPTV industry with these practices. [source]

Entry Filed under: Uncategorized