MPEG-4 Solution Opens The Way For QuickTime 6.0


The MPEG consortium (MPEG-LA) has announced a solution to the licensing dilemma over MPEG-4 it has debated with major industry players. The proposed licensing terms were published Monday by the group. Industry players, such as Apple's Phil Schiller, have previously cited licensing problems as the reasons behind the delay of Apple's QuickTime 6.0, Broadcaster and Streaming Server.

Under the proposed terms, software developers would play 25 cents out of each copy of their software which incorporates MPEG-4 technology, up to a cap of $1 million per annum. A "use fee" of 2 cents per hour would also apply.

Hardware/media producers aren't left out either: MPEG-LA suggests that a 2-cent-per-hour of prerecorded material be applied to MPEG-4-compliant DVD discs.

An article by Dan Daley in the DVD Report also looks at expiring Sony/Phillips CD patents, as well as the recent move by MPEG-LA to halve its licensing fees for MPEG-2, the current standard for DVD-Video discs. Daley also points at shrinking margins for DVD producers, although he says that the lobbying tactics of disc manufacturers have pressured MPEG-LA successfully; not so much by getting out of signing binding contracts, but in terms of reducing licensing costs.

For Apple, this is important as it seeks to push QuickTime as the standard for broadcast-quality streaming media, not to mention its role as a business/creative productivity tool on the desktop.

Analysis: Apple, remember, makes money out of licensing FireWire, QuickTime and a host of other patented technologies. Funding further MPEG research - at a fair price - provides the incentive for more and better MPEG standards. What is the alternative? Firms like Microsoft could develop their own standards - as they already have with WMP, virtually eschewing MP3. MPEG-LA has to introduce a competitive licensing regime; otherwise, it leaves the door wide open for Microsoft to develop a competing standard it can load onto 95% of the world's desktops, and no one need know MPEG ever existed. It's happened before. And if it happened in this instance, QuickTime would be dead in the water.