[M4IF Discuss] On2 and IPR

[Craig Birkmaier]

At 6:37 PM -0800 3/22/02, William J. Fulco wrote:
>Oliver,
>
>You'd be truly amazed how much 1980s technology STILL works and is 
>useful for video-compression (speaking as someone that just loves to 
>troll around the UCLA Engineering Library stacks for fun :-)  Think 
>of it this way - there were techniques developed for 
>research-situations back in the 70s and 80s that needed very 
>special-purpose hardware in those days...  things that today can be 
>done on a simple microprocessor in software...  don't give "1982 
>video compression technology" the short shrift so quickly :-) 
>Granted - most technologies (unless military) weren't talking 
>0.10bpp back then - but, really - wouldn't you be just as happy with 
>a 0.3bpp that gave you good quality and could be encoded and decoded 
>(today) in software :-)
>

Excellent point Bill.
Personally, I have not seen much in the MPEG-2 patent pool that is 
all that revolutionary. The majority of the significant IP is related 
to the coding of interlace, which is something that we would all be 
better of without. Most of the rest is incremental improvements in 
motion compensated prediction, created in large measure to 
re-establish IP developed in the '70s and early '80s that would soon 
enter the public domain. This looks like an effort to entrench the 
interests of the18 companies that made a massive investment in the 
MPEG-2 process, and have since used that standard to proliferate an 
SDTV paradigm around the world that protects their investments in 
interlace and "601."
-- 
Regards
Craig Birkmaier
Pcube Labs