MPEG Industry Forum

It is encouraging to see that the hits on our home page have doubled over the last month compared to the average in 2002. MPEG-4 is definitely gaining more and more attention, with the almost daily releases of new products now.

This week, Pace Soft Silicon was the 36th company to sign up for M4IF's interop tests. These tests are now going into the 5th round. M4IF's resources pages have had a minor overhaul, mostly behind the scenes--they are now fully database-driven and will be more up-to-date going forward. There is now a special page on papers, tutorials, books, publications, webcasts, etc.

M4IF is gearing up for NAB 2003. Together with SMPTE we are organizing an exciting special session on emerging MPEG technology. Tentative details are here and more will follow soon.

Some of the interesting links for last week go below. I'll give them without too much comment this week, to not delay the digest even further.

Best Regards,

Rob Koenen

MPEG-4 News

DivX software delivers moveable media [CNET, 30 Jan 03]
Intel Develops New XScale Chip For Handhelds [SiliconValley.Internet, 29 Jan 03]
Simple Streaming Media (review of Prismiq's MediaPlayer) [Forbes.com, 29 Jan 03]
Faster Is Better Dept. [PC Magazine, 28 Jan 03] - has a blurb on High Efficiency AAC (also known as aacPlus), the miracle audio compressor that is going to be finalized by MPEG in 5 weeks from now.
MPEG-4 DRM getting ready [AfterDawn, 28 Jan 03] - About ISMA completing its DRM spec for its interoperable Internet Streaming framework based on MPEG-4
Code compatible high performance DSP [dial infolink, 28 Jan 03]
MPEG-4 on road to rights management [CNET News, 28 Jan 03] - also about ISMA's DRM efforts
Cyberlink (PowerDVD) and DivX networks team up [AfterDawn, 27 Jan 03]
Sorenson Squeeze 3 products shipping [MacCentral, 27 Jan 03]

Member Releases

MPEG LA to Hold MPEG-4 License Information Meeting in Tokyo, 10 February [MPEG LA, 30 Jan 03]
New Release of DivX Video Codec Supports High-Quality Playback on CE Devices [DivXNetworks, 29 Jan 03]
Sorenson Squeeze 3, Winner of Macworld Best of Show and the NerdTV Encoder Shootout ... [Sorenson, 27 Jan 03]
Popwire releases “Live Engine” for Sun's Linux Product Line containing dicas’ MPEG-4 technology [dicas, 27 Jan 03

Other Releases

Audio and Video to Pioneer Multimedia Home Network Market [In-Stat/MDR, 28 Jan 03]
Navigator Technology Ventures Announces Investment in Sand Video [Navigator Technology, 27 Jan 03]
CAST Releases MPEG-4 and JPEG 2000 IP Cores [CAST, Inc., 27 Jan 03]

Events

11-14 Feb 03	Graphite 2003, Melbourne
5-10 Apr 03	NAB 2003, Las Vegas with an M4IF booth and MPEG Session.
7 April, 1 - 5 pm	MPEG SuperSession at NAB, organized by SMPTE and M4IF. The Session focuses on MPEG-4, including talks on then newly approved Advanced Video Coding and High Efficiency AAC, and a bit on MPEG-7 and MPEG-21