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In the last decade, the MPEG-2 standard laid the groundwork for a huge industry in digital video, as standardization cut costs and fueled innovation among content and service providers. In this decade, MPEG-4 seems poised to do the same for streamed digital video running on a variety of interactive broadband networks.
"Standards, such as MPEG-4 are tremendously important when there are dramatic shifts in the market," says Elliot Broadwin, President & CEO of iVast, a new company building media delivery software based on MPEG-4. "The explosive growth of broadband Internet access is such a shift and without a standard, this exciting new market will be fragmented and expensive to serve."
That currently is the case with streaming media, because there are three main competing proprietary formats: Real Networks' Real Player; Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Apple Computer's QuickTime. Content developers and service providers must develop and store content in each of these formats to reach the maximum audience, making it an expensive endeavor. A transition to more video will only increase expense.
"We definitely see MPEG-4 as a way to reduce costs for video on the Internet and broadband service providers want that," says Sean Badding, senior analyst for media research firm, The Carmel Group. "We see it really taking off in the 2001-2002 time frame."
"MPEG-4 will allow video service providers to create media in one common standard, automate conversion to other standards and streamline the process of worldwide distribution to take advantage of the global broadband Internet," says iVast's Broadwin.
MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC standard developed in 1998 by the Moving Picture Experts Group. That's the same committee responsible for developing the MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standards that ignited a digital video revolution including digital cable and satellite TV, DVDs and interactive video CD-ROMs. The MPEG-4 standard was created to be the next major standard in the world of multimedia, developed for burgeoning wireless and wired broadband media networks.
Unlike MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, which both focused on better compression efficiency, the emphasis in MPEG-4 is on new functionalities, particularly in a broadband networked context. One key feature is the ability to encode once for playback at multiple bit rates, meaning the same file could be streamed over cable, satellite or any other type of wired or wireless connection. This eliminates the need to encode once for playback by a 150 kilobits per second DSL user and again for 300 kbps cable modem user.
Another attractive element of MPEG-4 is that it is "object-oriented," meaning that different media types (audio, visual and text) all can be integrated and streamed together into one compressed file.
MPEG-4 has received a wide degree of support over the last year from a range of cable operators, consumer electronics providers and broadcasters, seeking a single standard for broadband video streaming. MPEG-4 also is being implemented into a range of wireless devices. Wireless service providers see this as a way to increase the types of services they can offer, thus driving penetration and usage of higher bandwidth wireless services. Bell Mobility, Canada's leading provider of wireless voice and data services, announced in January the beginning of a wireless multimedia field test using PacketVideo Corp.'s MPEG-4 based software to deliver a variety of video and audio clips to customers.
Several new wireless devices that support the standard also were announced in January. Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Motorola all announced handheld or portable devices capable of showing MPEG-4 multimedia.
Noticeably absent from the drive to adopt MPEG-4 have been Real Networks and Microsoft, the current proprietary leaders in streaming media. In December, the Internet Streaming Media Alliance was formed by a broad range of Internet-related companies to push adoption of MPEG-4. The coalition includes such heavyweights as Apple and Cisco Systems, but not the market leaders.
"We've been a leader in Internet standards technology, and we're strong believers in standards," said Dave Fester, general manager of Microsoft's digital media division. "But in the extremely fast pace of digital media, standards can't keep up. And if you can't innovate fast enough to meet consumers' needs, the standards effort probably won't cut it."
"We've chosen to embrace and extend the standard," says Ben Rothholz, general manager of products and systems at Real Networks.
Still, both have pledged to support MPEG-4, if enough momentum is gained. And several new companies seem more than ready to push the new standard. Ivast is one newcomer offering media companies a turnkey solution for encoding, serving and conducting commerce with MPEG-4 media content. With backing from such notables as Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures, Bell Canada and Matsushita, iVast unveiled its first end-to-end MPEG-4 solution in December at Streaming Media West. PacketVideo is another early entrant, and has already announced ventures with Bell Canada, Mitsubishi and Warner Brothers, among others
Broadwin of iVast sees the coming year this way, "2001 is the year of implementation for MPEG-4. Many companies are developing products to support the standard and build a worldwide MPEG-4 economy similar to that of MPEG-2. With the formation of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance late last year, there is now a complementary interoperability body to ensure compatibility and encourage worldwide system adoption.
"We will see MPEG-4 systems covering encoding, transcoding, authoring, digital rights management, content management, e-commerce, object orientation, network streaming, network storage, and multiple client devices."
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