Petteri Pyyny
11 Dec 2001 14:05
RealNetworks announced yesterday that it will support MPEG-4 video format in all its upcoming products, offering a real possibility for an interoperability between various applications and platforms.
So far Real and Microsoft have focused on strengthening their propietary formats' positions on the market while the rest of the streaming video industry has struggled to create a real global standard for wireless video. Bunch of streaming technology heavy-weights, including Apple, have already formed an association called ISMA, to create a standard for video streaming based on MPEG-4.
MPEG-4 is a relatively new standard from MPEG group which has also developed MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 formats. MPEG-1 format is used widely in VideoCDs and it is also the core of MP3 format (MP3 stands for MPEG-1 audio layer III). MPEG-2 is used in digital TV broadcasting and it is also the format that is used on DVD-Video discs. World's best-known MPEG-4 -based format is called DivX, a format that has created a craze all over the world to ditribute movies over the Net just like people do for MP3s.
Now only major player that isn't using standardized MPEG-4 in its player is Microsoft who wants to stick with its own propietary format, Windows Media Video -- funnies thing is that WMV is also based on MPEG-4, it just has Microsoft modifications in it that makes it non-compatible with other MPEG-4 applications.