Apple Eyes MPEG-4
Among the "big three" technology players in streaming media (Apple, Microsoft and RealNetworks), Apple seems the most likely to pursue an MPEG-4 standard-based approach — not surprising given that its technology forms the base of the MPEG-4 specification. That doesn't mean that QuickTime 5 equals MPEG-4. According to Frank Casanova, Apple's director of QuickTime product marketing, "QuickTime 5, at the moment, has no announced support for MPEG-4."
Still, Apple is very much involved in the numerous standards organizations and has seen the benefits of a standard-based approach.
"QuickTime 4 was the first version that did streaming," says Casanova. "We could have gone proprietary but we went with RTP and RTSP. As a result we were more interoperable with technologies like H.263 (a telecommunications standard well-suited for delivering video over wireless networks that promises to have a lot of overlap with the MPEG-4 standard), Cisco's IPTV, and others. We got more bang for our buck than we ever anticipated. So QuickTime plays along with RTP and RTSP, which is a very niche standard, but if we looked at working with MPEG-4, the interoperability win could be massive."
Such interoperability ultimately benefits the consumer, and creates a more sound platform for competition among technology providers, according to Tim Schaaff of the QuickTime engineering team. "When you think about what's in the best interest of the customer, it just makes sense," he says. "To imagine that one company with one standard can meet the needs of all the players [in the streaming video and multimedia market] is ludicrous. Adopting standards allows companies to develop in the area of their expertise. The competition becomes purer and cleaner. You're competing on implementation, not on file format."
Adopting standards also allows application developers to add functionality without extra effort. Schaaff points out that if QuickTime does support MPEG-4, then all the developers of authoring tools like Flash, or video production tools like Media 100's Cleaner, will incorporate MPEG-4 by virtue of the QuickTime Architecture. "Many of these tools sit on top of QuickTime's architecture, so as long as we continue to upgrade QuickTime, they won't have to do any work," says Schaaff.
Is It Real, or MPEG-4?
One of Apple's key competitors in the streaming arena, RealNetworks, remains unconvinced of the technical and market value of MPEG-4. "On the technology front, the specification is a sprawling set of documents from which only a small portion is useful for the nuts and bolts of interoperability, and even then it's not complete and is still a work in progress," says Rob Lanphier, program manager of open standards for RealNetworks.
In a recent article for
CommVerge.com, Peter Zaballos, director of wireless marketing for RealNetworks, was more specific. "MPEG-4 has garnered attention for some areas of video codec resiliency. However, most of the features involve resiliency for bit errors, not packet loss — a much more common occurrence in lossy networks. In a wireless environment, the physical layer takes care of bit errors, but the standard contains few provisions for addressing packet loss."
Real is also concerned about the business and financial issues of MPEG-4 implementation.
"On the business side, there are dozens of companies claiming to own intellectual property associated with essential technology in the specification, and the group responsible for working out a licensing pool [the MPEG-4 Industry Forum, M4IF] is long overdue in its attempts to work out the first of many pieces necessary for a complete end-to-end system," says Lanphier.
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