[M4IF Discuss] What is the REAL advantage?

[Ben Waggoner]

Adam,
    Also, there are no license fees for the first year.  So the big three
can all ship MPEG-4 playback and encode for a year, and see how the market
develops.
Ben Waggoner
Interframe Media <http://www.interframemedia.com>
Digital Video Compression Consulting, Training, and Encoding
on 2/6/02 12:46 PM, Adam Siegel at adrockus   earthlink.net wrote:
> Well, the big 3 do not need a crystal ball to figure out how to deal with
> MPEG-4. They can afford to embrace and extend early on if they wish. They
> ARE the Web streaming market as it exists today - they have the customers
> and the users and the channels. That puts them in the best position to
> project what the market will need moving forward. Sure they can be wrong,
> but they can also afford to be wrong or even just wait and see what happens
> and then decide to join in if it looks like it is getting interesting. They
> can always join the game a bit late and still win - remember what happened
> with MS vs. Netscape in the browser war?
> 
> I guess I am just taking a longwinded way of expressing what others have
> already said: I believe the more interesting opportunities for new companies
> in the MPEG-4 space will be outside of the Web arena.