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Reference Software

One morning of July 1990, Arian Koster of KPN Research called me to make a suggestion: “What if MPEG developed a software implementation of the MPEG-1 standard?”. My immediate reaction...
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Conformance

MPEG-1 is a great standard, but there is a potential problem in its practical adoption. Imagine I am a manufacturer and I choose to be in the business of making...
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Inside MPEG-1

MPEG-1 is formally known as ISO/IEC 11172. ISO/IEC refers to the fact that the standard is recognised by both ISO and IEC because JTC 1, the Technical Committee under which...
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The achievements of MPEG-1

Besides being an excellent set of pieces of technology, MPEG-1 is also a remarkable collection of “first ever” achievements.  It was the first integrated audio-visual standard. This was a great...
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The Highs And Lows Of Television

One-to-many communication seems to be a business blessed by the blindfolded goddess. Newspapers are one of the first and, until recently, the most successful of such businesses. Coveted, pampered, feared,...
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The Digital Television Maze

At the very first meeting in Ottawa, MPEG had set for itself an initial work plan based on three targets: substandard definition television as provided by SIF (1/4 of SDTV)...
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MPEG-2 Development – Video

The first open MPEG-2 “session” took place in Porto in July 1990. Months before, while in search for a meeting host for this ever-growing MPEG group, I had asked Prof....
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MPEG-2 Development – Audio

As with MPEG-1, the Audio work in MPEG-2 took a different turn from its original direction. MPEG-1 Audio already provided an excellent way to compress stereo audio, exactly what many...
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MPEG-2 Development – Systems

The development of the MPEG-2 Audio and Video standards required the best experts in digital audio and video processing, but the development of the Systems part required seasoned engineers, a...
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Inside MPEG-2

Unlike MPEG-1, where a reference model strictly need only consider the decoder, the full extent of the MPEG-2 standard requires consideration of the complete chain from source to destination for...
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The Impact of MPEG-2

The radio spectrum is sliced for use by a multitude of services and the VHF/UHF band assigned to terrestrial television broadcasting is very narrow. Spectrum scarcity used to make television...
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Beyond MPEG-2 Audio And Video

In 1992 and 1993 I was looking with interest at the developments in Europebearing the name “European Project on Digital Broadcasting”. Seeing what was brewing in Europe, the VADIS Strategic...
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The Need For Standards

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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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Craft, Intellect And Art

In primitive societies every able individual was capable of making for himself all that was needed for a living: bows, arrows, shoes, tents, pottery, etc. From early on the social...
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