The MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 cases described above demonstrate the power of standards as the enablers of communication. But what is a standard? There is so much confusion around this word that I want to use this page is to try and dissipate it. If you take the Webster’s under the…
Patents And Standards
Johannes Gutenberg had the great idea of developing a system to print books using movable characters. He had not just the idea, which had been floating around for a long time (actually, it had been in use in China for centuries), but also the skill and will to develop a…
The MPEG Way Of Standards Making
It is always so difficult to make a person outside the group understand that MPEG is not in the business of running beauty contests, i.e. of choosing one or a few established solutions from a set of candidates. Indeed MPEG does not typically choose complete solutions, it assembles them from…
An MPEG Meeting
Starting from the idea of compressing digital video to fit it in the low throughput of 1.4 Mbit/s of a CD, MPEG had to develop newer areas of expertise to provide standard component technologies to build complete solutions. The size of the group (some 300 participants from early on, 500…
Life In ISO
A free translation of the fake Latin proverb “Homo homini lupus, femina feminae lupior, sacerdos sacerdoti lupissimus” could go like this: man behaves like a wolf toward another man, a woman behaves with another woman in a more ferocious way than a man with another man, and a priest behaves…