File Format/Codec Support Very Important in Convergence Devices

ReWinD Blog » Why Transcoding is Here to Stay

ReWinD Blog » Why Transcoding is Here to Stay — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:06:30 GMT

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re: File Format/Codec Support Very Important in Convergence Devices

Glenn — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 01:18:09 GMT

Agreed completely. Tired of having to manage all of this myself...

Want to play that AVI video on your Tivo? Use Videora Tivo Converter to do that. Oops it doesn't support flash or .mp4 files or ...

I have so many video conversion programs/utilities now its getting ridiculous.

As far as the codecs though, you obviously left out flash, which may not look very good on a big TV, but its what YouTube and all sorts of other similar sites use so its unavoidable.

Not sure MPEG-1 is exactly commonplace anymore though...

The priorities for me would be:

- MPEG-2 (plus DVR-MS plus .tivo)

- DivX

- XviD

- AVC

- MPEG-4 ASP

- Flash

WMV wouldn't make the cut currently, nor would MPEG-1. Not that I'd mind either being included. The Google Video wrapper would be nice to support...

Glenn

Chris Lanier's Blog : Is Transcoding is Here to Stay?

Chris Lanier's Blog : Is Transcoding is Here to Stay? — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 17:33:56 GMT

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open codec support is too expensive

weldon — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:58:18 GMT

The point that I think you are missing is that supporting a wider variety of codecs would push the price point of these media devices far past what most would be willing to pay for a consumer electronics box. I wrote the rest of my thoughts on my blog here...

http://www.dodd.org/blog/2007/03/why-transcoding-is-here-to-stay/

Why Transcoding is Here to Stay » ReWinD

Why Transcoding is Here to Stay » ReWinD — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:58:04 GMT

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re: File Format/Codec Support Very Important in Convergence Devices

Petri Teittinen — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 12:39:26 GMT

Have to agree 100% with you, Chris. Wider codec support is something I've been shouting about for quite some time now, but to no avail. I was terribly disappointed with X360, as MS's pre-launch hype painted it as an all-singing, all-dancing media center. The reality turned out something entirely different. (MS's Amir M. gave me a good explanation about the situation, but I won't make it public without Amir's consent.)

As there doesn't seem to be any suitable CE devices in the horizon either, I'm actually placing my hopes on PlayStation 3. One Sony exec has made some remarks about Sony aiming to make PS3 a proper media player with support for a wide variety of file formats. However, he made no comment on when that will be happening.

Real-time transcoding? No thanks. I've got 10TB of data residing on RAID-5 arrays, capable of streaming data directly to media players without the help of a PC. The point is that if I buy a media player, it must be able to play whatever I throw at it without the need for a "helper" PC in between. Isn't that what I paid for? If I need to have a PC running somewhere, I might just as well build a HTPC and use that as a media player - but I don't want to go that route.

Off-topic: Chris, it's funny how some of your posts coincide with mine. For example, some time ago you wrote a rant about HDMI 1.3 - and I had written a very similar rant about HDMI 1.3 in my blog just a couple of days earlier. No, I'm not saying you're reading my blog (it's in Finnish, so how could you?); it's just amusing how we seem to get riled up about the same things simultaneously on opposite sides of the planet!

re: File Format/Codec Support Very Important in Convergence Devices

Ben Drawbaugh — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:55:00 GMT

No doubt that wide format support is important for anyone who knows what MPEG2 is.

I was talking about a mass market product, which is what the Xbox360 is for games and both it and the Apple TV want to be for media in general.

re: File Format/Codec Support Very Important in Convergence Devices

Matthew Flook — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 20:06:45 GMT

I used to have the same mindset and still run a dedicated Media Center HTPC because of this, but I think the future is moving towards real-time transcoding. This needs to become less of a hack (in the case of the Xbox 360) and more of a common component of Windows. I think Nero has the idea with their MediaHome UPNP server that's (strangely) a part of the Nero 7 burning suite. It can stream ANY file to ANY UPNP device because it transcodes it to whatever formats the client device understands. Why doesn't WMP or MCE do this?

Leave the codec madness up to the media server box and let the simple-minded client devices receive their stream in standard MPEG format. That's the smart solution if you ask me. Supposedly Intel's Viiv is doing the transcoding thing too, but I still don't think anyone knows what the hell Viiv is. Why keep re-inventing the wheel when this technology should all just be integrated into Windows/Media Center?

And while we're at it, Softsled, anyone?.........

re: File Format/Codec Support Very Important in Convergence Devices

chrisl — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:54:54 GMT

You might not agree that people have content in these formats, but I have a collection of WMP help articles hosted here all about codec's and file formats. People have this content, I can assure you of that. Just to get a basic info, one of my articles covers AVI playback in Windows (need a specific codec for most). It's got over 500,000 views alone. All the articles combined have web views over 3 million. People have this content, and 3 million of them have been here to find out about problems playing it back. That's just here, I'm not counting on information on Microsoft's webpages and such. Whether it be XviD, DivX, VP6, H.264, etc. There is a TON of random content out there that people download.

I Mom uses an Xbox to manage her media, mostly just TV however. :) Works for her just fine, I never touch it.

And then you can also look at the people who already have these devices. We get threads almost everyday at The Green Button about Media Center Extender's not being able to play their AVI files.

BTW, It's my opinion that all of these devices will have a small market in general. None will overtake the classic cable/sat box, and none will replace watching the majority of content on PC's. You have to appeal to the market that already wants to move their content into the living room, and these people have this content in third party file formats not supported in these devices.

Drop Dead simple

Ben Drawbaugh — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 18:42:54 GMT

Not sure if I agree with you on this one Chris.

Drop dead simple doesn't mean supports all codecs. Sure there are a few you really need to support like MPEG2 and a next gen codec like h.264, but downloading an Xvid off the Internet is beyond the capability of most users. Sure the people that read your site and EHD want the codec support you describe, but not joe 6-pack.

I think what people want is what Apple has promised with the Apple TV. Plug it in, connect to iTunes and buy media. It doesn't get any easier than that, sure it gets cheaper, but not easier. The Xbox360 also does a pretty good job of this if you can find the media and work through the points system. (Good luck explaining it to your mom)

The big miss by Apple is the requirement to use iTunes, sure iPod owners are used to it, but most would just like to have a Apple TV, with an all you can eat plan and do nothing but pay the monthly bill, ohh wait, they have that it's called VOD. But the real opportunity is to offer a all you can eat VOD service without any monthly obligation, but we both know that will probably never happen.

The bottom line we agree on, no one wants to have to understand what a codec is. they just want to watch what they want, when they want.