[d@DCC] CBC to back only proprietary Microsoft Media format.

[Russell McOrmond]

On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, John Lange wrote:

> To be fair to the CBC, what would have been the better choice? From the
> reading I've done on the BBC project, the reason they undertook it is
> because there isn't a good OSS alternative for video streaming. At least
> not one that offers similar compression and quality rates.

  You have mentioned the chicken-and-egg situation.  There isn't good Open
Standard (FLOSS isn't really the issue) A/V codecs because there hasn't
been a motivation thus far to do so.  That motivation either comes from
business imperatives (large customers that demand it) or political, both
of which are where government intervention for positive public policy
purposes comes in.

  The CBC is not a private corporation, but a public broadcaster with a
public mandate.  While the CBC may not have the money to help the BBC
develop an open CODEC, there needs to be a political push within the
Canadian government to put support into such things.  Essentially we need
to direct Government to "buy some chickens" to get this problem solved.

Note: CBC is making a change from RealVideo (open but not standardized
file format, proprietary codec but available on many platforms) to
Microsoft Media (closed file format, proprietary codec available on few
platforms).  A better choice for CBC is to wait to make the change,
adequately documenting the problem to the government such that the
government will have more incentive to "buy some chickens".

  In the meantime, there are earlier CODECs that work with both RealVideo
and Microsoft Media players.  They may not be the "technically best"  
codecs, but I think that cutting off part of the audience to shave a few
bits off the size of the stream is quite drastic.  As to compression
rates, sending me a file that I am unable to decode (legally,
technologically, etc) sounds like a very poor compression rate to me ;-)

-- 
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> 
 Get Creative: iCommons Canada Launch Party : September 30, 2004
 http://digital-copyright.ca/node/view/461  Creative Commons, 
 Open Access, Free/Libre and Open Source Software: In Canada, Eh!
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