[SpamCop-Geeks] Re: Seeking decent (free) MPEG-2 (sic?!) for Media Player 10 and TivoDesktop 2.0...

[Bert Driehuis]

Blammo wrote:

> MPEG-4 is pretty much just Apple, MS's "MPEG4" isn't very good and noone 
> uses it.

MS's MPEG4 (aka, "DivX 3.x") is hampered by license and/or patents 
issues, if I understand the situation correctly. There is much acrimony 
amongst MPEG4 developers. Other than that, there appears to be nothing 
wrong with the MS implementation: business as usual (Microsoft announces 
Patent Armageddon; News at Eleven).

I paid for a DivX 5.x license and I still haven't figured out if the 
money went to the developers or the scalpers :-)

That said, I have a very checkered history with trying to encode 
DivX/Xvid/MPEG4 (often "checkered" is the result literally; other times 
my DVD player chokes on it, or it plays it but fast-forward chokes; all 
in all a litany of failure).

So, for all intents and purposes, MPEG2 is only the safe choice for me 
(with the obvious disclaimer that MPEG2 still has good and bad codecs etc).

I think the hard disk manufacturers have paid the MPEG4 developers to 
create this mess. I always prefer a good conspiracy theory. My Angry 
Beavers[1] collection currently weighs in at 50GB, and with MPEG4 that 
should be whittled down to 15GB or something like that. MPEG4's claim to 
fame is not it's image quality; it's the relatively small loss of 
quality for higher compression ratios when compared to the classic MPEG2 
codecs.

			-- Bert

[1] And for those in the readership that aren't privy to Nickelodeon's 
programming, that's a cartoon series, not an X-rated movie.