Re: Convergence for iTunes/iPod/iLife/iTV: MPEG-4

In article <7Rhkh.21157$RR4.18001@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Lawson English <LawsonE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Lawson English wrote:
> [...]
> > Here's a summary of features of MPEG-4 that might be doable with iTV .

> > iTunes + iLife + iTV could be THE killer combo for MPEG-4. If iTV
caught 
> > on in a big way, cable-providers might start selling MPEG-4-based 
> > advertising for playback through iTV. Scary.
> > 
> > 
> > http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/presentations/pdffiles/mpeg4gat.pdf
> 
> So MPEG-4 is dead, except as a better codec?

Interactive features in video formats -- which QuickTime has sup****ted 
practically forever -- have never caught on for any but the most trivial 
purposes. VRML was a big flop. And some of the other stuff, like the 
face coding, might be useful if bandwidth was severely restricted, but 
it's not these days. Moreover, just because all of this stuff is lumped 
into one huge standard doesn't necessarily make it any more likely to 
get implemented.

Maybe you'll see MPEG-4 movies distributed with chapter stops and menus, 
like DVDs. I don't imagine these features will be used for much else.

I find it quite entertaining that even Flash is probably used more 
commonly today to deliver video content than the interactive content it 
was originally designed to deliver. Hopefully Adobe will take note and 
implement H.264 in it. (As things stand now, flash video is 2-3 times as 
large as H.264 QuickTime for similar quality.)

-- 
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law."
          -- George W. Bush in Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005